Chrysalis

13

Compared to the low-key but relatively garrulous Asperton, Peyton made for a vile tour guide. He answered Logan’s questions in monosyllables as he led the way through unmarked doors, down yellow-striped concrete stairwells, and along corridors that grew increasingly drab and institutional — a far cry from the beautifully designed and furnished Complex Logan had grown used to.

Within minutes, they were heading down a hallway so long and straight that, Logan realized, it must be one of the four spokes leading from the central spire toward the Torus. The walls were curved slightly like the belly of a ship — implying they were on the lowest level — and there were no windows. Instead, data panels set into the walls winked green, orange, and red, and people in electric carts sped back and forth on nameless errands. Logan noticed that, although they had the standard-issue badges he’d seen throughout the Complex, most workers on this level were wearing formfitting jumpsuits. But Logan had little time to observe; if anything, Peyton walked faster the farther they went. Now and then, he seemed to be talking to himself, but Logan realized he was transmitting orders via his Omega device.

Reaching the far end of the spoke, they turned right and started down another corridor, wider but equally utilitarian. Peyton stopped at a bank of elevators and Logan followed the operations director inside. To his surprise, they were at the top rather than the bottom level. Peyton pressed a button on the control panel.

“What’s down here?” Logan asked. “The Chrysalis salt mines?”

“I’m not sure how to take that. My grandfather was a coal miner in West Virginia.”

“Take it however you’d like. I just had no idea that part of the Torus was actually underground.”

“This isn’t the Torus. This is what makes the Torus — and everything else here — run.”

The subterranean elevator stopped, and the doors opened onto another industrial corridor. It was warmer down here, and louder: not with music, but the thrum of machinery. The walls were dense with signage, and more people in jumpsuits were scurrying here and there. It seemed as if he’d just stepped out into a lower, institutional deck of an ocean liner.

Peyton opened a door marked simply private. Inside was a large office, with a bank of electronics on one wall and a row of privacy blinds opposite. There was a desk; a large conference table surrounded by chairs; and various pieces of equipment on wheeled stainless-steel carts.

“Snow?” Peyton said, seemingly talking to himself again. “Everything in place?”

Logan watched as Peyton nodded at the response. “All right, then. Calm, quick, and by the numbers. I’ll be watching.” Then he moved to the far side of the desk, pressed a button, and the wall-to-wall privacy blinds were drawn up, like the asbestos safety curtain of a theater stage.

“Jesus,” Logan murmured.

A wall of windows looked down over a huge room, perhaps three stories deep, that was something between mission control and an ant farm. He could see row upon row of workstations, each glowing from the illumination of two or even three monitors. At least a hundred people occupied the hangar-like space. He noticed that a number of them were armed.

“What the hell is all that?” Logan asked.

“That, Dorothy, is what’s behind the curtain,” Peyton said. “Now, come over here. Things are going to happen quickly, and I won’t have time to nursemaid you.”

“I’m already weaned.”

“We’ll see about that.” Peyton took a seat at the conference table and motioned Logan to do the same. He pulled one of several idle laptops close to them, woke it, then went through a brief syncing process with his Omega device.

“All right, Dr. Logan,” he said as the screen displayed the Chrysalis logo. “I’ve been told to extend you ‘every courtesy.’ To be honest, I don’t know how a publicity hound like you can help.”

He swiveled the screen toward Logan. “I’m going to show you a series of short clips. Please watch as I explain: this is your precious ‘commonality’ in the flesh.”

The screen flickered, then arranged itself into three windows. On the left half of the screen was, apparently, a video capture, currently paused. The other, smaller windows were filled with scrolling metadata and other information Logan couldn’t parse.

Peyton issued a command via his Omega and the window on the left came to life. It was not a grainy security cam, or the blurred, heat-responsive blobs of an infrared viewer. Rather, the window was alive with tiny black line segments, arranging themselves in such a way as to make distinct images, like iron filings responding to a magnet. The jittering, flickering threads had taken the form of a man in a short-sleeved shirt, unlocking a keyboard case, then bending over the now-exposed keys. He began typing, looking over his shoulder furtively every few seconds. The image jumped around ever so slightly, like an old silent movie whose nitrate stock had been run through too many projectors.

“What the hell kind of new technology is this?” Logan asked. “Is that — camera — peering through walls?”

“Meet Karel Mossby,” Peyton said instead of answering a question that was obviously a trade secret. “Systems programmer and Chrysalis employee. He used to be at Infinium, and during the merger Wrigley insisted we bring him over. Loved the guy. Apparently, he’d managed to optimize some codec into two dozen lines of assembly code, half the number anyone else had achieved.” He snorted his opinion of this achievement.

As Peyton spoke, a different video began. Now the man — Logan could tell quite clearly, despite the odd medium, it was the same man — was entering a room marked server farm B2 — no air-breathing entities authorized! He closed the door behind him, then stepped forward and bent over a rack of thickly twisted cables.

“Wrigley thought Mossby was a genius,” Peyton said. “I suppose he is. But he never took to the rules of our little community here in the woods. He missed the freedom of places like Berkeley and Infinium. Despite warnings, he ignored our guidelines. Nothing wrong with a young man being curious — but his was the wrong kind of curiosity.”

Logan watched as the figure on the screen deftly switched several cables. Hearing the cherubic Peyton refer to anyone as a “young man” seemed risible.

“At last, things got to the point where his messing around became a danger to operational integrity. Anybody else would have been yanked, given a first-class debriefing, then fired. But that was during our honeymoon with Infinium, so to keep Wrigley happy, Mossby became a white hat with highly restricted access.”

“White hat?” Logan repeated. “As in, hackers who find flawed code for the good guys?”

“Right. Performing pen tests, ensuring area denial was as robust as possible.” On the screen now was what appeared to be a dormitory. Logan could see the strange, jittery image of Mossby, this time kneeling behind a steel bunk bed and prizing up a piece of flooring with a crowbar. “Mossby was put behind a secure moat. Or so we thought. But as you can see, he continued his unauthorized activities. So: You wanted a commonality? Well, here’s one — roaming wild. But he’s about to be domesticated.”

“And you think he’s responsible for those messages?” Logan asked. “For the three deaths?”

Peyton picked up on his skeptical tone. “Dr. Logan, would it surprise you to learn that — with all the ‘skunk works’ and classified projects being developed here by Chrysalis subsidiaries — this little mountain valley holds more scientific talent than anywhere else on earth?”

“It would,” Logan said, quite honestly.

“With so many superior minds, selecting the eager while winnowing out the venal is a task we’ll never get a hundred percent right. Scientists and strictures are like oil and vinegar. I’ll deny ever telling you this, but right now there are thirty or so hackers, agents provocateurs, pranksters, and — yes — corporate spies here at the Complex that we’re surveilling. Some we rein in; others we mislead. But Mossby is in a class by himself. When he was forced out of VR work, we were left with a mind not only brilliant but bored and, it seems, resentful. For a while, Mossby spent his idle hours leeching away ten percent of our processing power for some private project of his own — the second clip you saw. And he spent a lot of time using ‘row hammer’ attacks on Omega’s firewall — I doubt it was homesickness for Infinium. But now here, you’re watching him introduce a worm into the internal messaging database, no doubt hoping for access to the Helix—”

As he recounted these arcane feats, Peyton’s voice had risen indignantly. But now he caught himself. For a moment he went pale, and Logan sensed both fear and anger as the man realized he’d said too much.

“What’s the Helix —?” he began.

With remarkable speed, Peyton leaned in toward Logan, extending a warning finger as he did so. The sudden motion pushed his suit jacket back, and Logan saw the handle of a small-caliber Glock nestled into a belt holster.

“That was my mistake,” he said. “So I’ll tell you once — nicely. Don’t say that word again while you’re here. It has nothing to do with your investigation — and it’s not something you ever want to grow curious about.”

Suddenly, the image on the screen flickered again; went black; then came back into focus, this time as a normal, full-colored video feed. It displayed an empty hallway, someone just walking into view. It was Mossby. The laptop speaker, silent until now, crackled into life. Logan temporarily put aside Peyton’s odd threat to watch as another two men and a woman appeared out of nowhere to surround Mossby, spin him around, and, with shouted obscenities, push him against the nearest wall, then — guns drawn — cuff and lead him, protesting loudly, through a doorway and off camera. The door closed and the hallway was empty once again.

A second later, Logan heard a chirp from Peyton’s Omega. The head of Logistics listened a moment, said, “Excellent,” then glanced at Logan.

“Problem solved,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

“I’m glad you think so.”

Peyton snorted. “O ye of little faith. The man you just saw was angry at Omega for demoting him; he had the ability to send the kind of internal messages Claire Asperton received… and he has the ability to plan exactly the kind of exploits that are plaguing us.”

“But those images you just showed me — if they are what you say — have no relation to the deaths of the board members.”

“This is a tiny fraction of what we have on Mossby. Those thirty rogue workers I mentioned? In terms of capability and motive, he tops the list, by far. We’ve been watching, assembling evidence, just waiting for Asperton to give us the green light to snag him. If she’d done it a couple of days ago, a few more board members might still be alive.” Peyton stood up.

“When will I get a chance to question him?”

“You?” Peyton asked, as if this possibility had not occurred to him. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“Protocol — among other things. Nobody can talk to him for the moment; not while he’s being processed. After that, we’ll see.” He gestured toward the door. “But I think it’s safe to say your ‘commonality’ is now safely in our hands. I even allowed you to watch his capture. Now, if you’ll come with me, I’ll find someone to escort you back upstairs and out of this — what did you call it? Oh, yes: salt mine.”