Cutting Edge

5

DeBolt did not sleep like the dead man he supposedly was. In recent nights he’d stirred frequently as bolts of light and dark, post-traumatic he was sure, coursed through his beaten head. Now he lay awake trying only for control, some logic to replace the encroaching madness. The accident, the severe injuries, a hospital stay he barely remembered. Chandler bringing him here, caring for him, isolating him. Her self-destructive behavior. There was simply no solution — every way DeBolt painted the facts, something seemed wrong, a wayward stroke of color that clashed with the rest. In the end, he drew but one conclusion. His time here was drawing to an end.

But what would take its place? Return to Alaska and the Coast Guard? A cheery hello to friends and coworkers who’d already attended his funeral? He wondered if he could walk into his station and claim amnesia. He had the head wounds to back it up. I have no idea what happened, but here I am …

The full truth, he decided, was not an option, because he saw no way to present it without harming Joan Chandler. She had brought him here, put him into hiding. Anyone taking those actions on face value could accuse her of endangering a gravely ill patient by keeping him outside a proper hospital environment. Yet DeBolt knew otherwise. He was convinced she’d saved his life, and put herself at professional risk by doing so. So he would protect Chandler, in turn, by taking the most difficult path — that of patience.

He was sure there was more to the story, circumstances his nurse had not yet explained. Details that would cause everything to make sense. A file, perhaps, he had not yet seen.

He rose at his customary hour of 6:00 A.M., and dressed quietly so as not to disturb Chandler — even though she hadn’t moved since last night. DeBolt was on the beach before the sun lifted, ready for his morning run. The storm was building, and in the predawn darkness he stood at the water’s edge and watched a rising sea. An intemperate wind whipped his hair, which was growing fast and increasingly out of regulation. Rain appeared imminent, and he briefly weighed it as an excuse to postpone his run. DeBolt looked up and down the beach. He’d seen no one since the young girl at the tide pools, and today was no different, only brown rock and sea and walls of evergreen forest. Staring at the desolate scene, he was reminded that Joan Chandler was the only person on earth who knew he was still alive. It seemed simultaneously comforting and troubling.

The sun cracked the horizon, a brilliant arc of red, and DeBolt realized he had not put on his Timex. Without actually speaking, and for no particular reason, he formed a very deliberate mental question: What time does the sun rise today?

He was debating whether to go back for his watch — in order to time his run, and the swim he would also not forego — when an odd sensation swept over him. It came like a strobe in his head, a tiny flash amid darkness. DeBolt blinked and closed his eyes, fearing he was suffering some manifestation of the injuries to his brain. An omen of complications.

Then, suddenly, he acquired a strange manner of focus. Ghosting behind tightly closed eyes he saw a perfectly clear set of numbers.

6:37 A.M.

DeBolt snapped his eyes open.

The sea and the rocks were there, steady and ever present. The sky was unerring, coming alive in subtle colors. The apparition disappeared as abruptly as it had come. With a thumb and forefinger he rubbed the orbits of his eyes, pressing and massaging until the last glimmer was gone. Christ, he thought, now I’m seeing things.

He took a single step back, turned, and struck out east on a determined sprint.

“I got a hit,” said a young man from his basement workstation.

The woman at the computer next to him said, “What?”

They were located sixteen miles outside Washington, D.C., in a remote outpost run by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The building in which they worked was as new as it was unremarkable. Indeed, should the word “nondescript” ever be translated into an architectural style, the place could be held as a masterpiece. It was rectangular in shape, although not perfectly so, one gentle portico at the front entrance, and a slightly larger blister behind at the supply dock. What lay inside, however, was anything but ordinary. The first floor was dedicated to electronics and cooling, and twin diesel generators allowed independence from the local power grid. The second floor consisted of a few offices and conference rooms, all rarely occupied, and three banks of supercomputers that churned without rest. The roof was banded by a high concrete wall, inside of which lay over a dozen antennae, all sealed in radomes to give protection from the elements and, more to the point, from unwanted prying eyes. There was a road and a parking lot, both new, and enough surrounding acreage to put the nearest neighbor a comfortable two miles away. There had been one man, old and cantankerous, who’d lived less than a mile to the east, and who had held out for a ridiculous price during construction. In the end, he got it.

It was all built for what was in the basement.

“Really … I got a hit,” the young man repeated. “A primary response on node Bravo 7.”

She set down her Coke. “No, Chris, you did not get a hit. How could you?”

He leaned back and invited her to check his screen. She did, and saw the tiny warning flag and data bubble.

“Has to be a bug in the software,” she said.

“Could it be a test?” he ventured. “Do you think the general might input something like that to validate the system?” He was referring to the project director, Brigadier General Karl Benefield.

“Could be,” she said. “That’s pretty much all we’re doing at this point, making sure everything works. You know our status — three months minimum before phase two is active. There won’t be a valid warning like that until phase five goes live, which is years away.”

“Should I report it?”

“Normally, I’d say yeah. But the general isn’t even around this week — I hear he’s buried in meetings to address software issues.”

“So what should I do?”

With no small degree of irritation, she leaned over and began typing on his keyboard. “There,” she said with finality, “all node interface alerts are disabled. We can bring it up at the next project integration meeting, but for now just forget it.”

The young man looked at her questioningly, a Can we do that? expression.

The woman, who had been here for two years, since the project’s very beginning, ignored him and went back to her screen.

The two technicians had no way of knowing that the warning had also lit on a second computer thirteen miles away, in a much larger five-sided building. The reaction there was very different.