Reboot Page 3

  “Well?” demanded Akane. “What does it say?”

  John held the letter up so they could all see it. He could already recite the short message by heart.

  “GHOST NETWORK: PLEASE REPORT TO THE TORTILLA GODZILLA RESTAURANT. IMMEDIATELY.”

  What was it about cheap restaurant signs? It didn’t matter how garish they were, how brightly lit or cheerful, they just looked sad. John eyed this one gloomily: it was attached to the hotel on the north side. The four of them had to walk out of the front door and cross the chilly parking lot to access it.

  “MIGUEL’S TORTILLA GODZILLA!” read Slack, wrinkling his nose as he stared up at the garish red-and-yellow lettering. “What’s with the exclamation point?”

  “And how are you supposed to pronounce it?” asked Salome. “Is that ‘Tor-tiller God-ziller’ or ‘Tor-teeya God-zeeya’? This Miguel can’t have it both ways.”

  “I don’t actually care,” said Akane, rubbing her arms. “I’m freezing, and it’s the only restaurant, so for goodness’ sake let’s get inside.”

  It was even more depressing inside than it was from the outside. John slid past a giant plastic dinosaur—with a plastic taco in its front claws—and led the way to a booth near the rear windows. Fastidiously, Salome rubbed a wet wipe across the cushion, then stared at it. None of them sat down.

  “It’s sticky,” said Akane, touching a fingertip to the table. “Give me that wipe.”

  “It’s also tacky,” remarked Slack. “Is this where plastic cactuses go to die?”

  “Apparently it’s where Mexican stereotypes go,” said John, pointing a thumb at the man behind the bar. He wore a shabby poncho, and the tips of his long, greasy mustache were just visible, peeking out below a huge sombrero; the barkeep’s head was lowered as he intently wiped and scrubbed at the chipped melamine bar. John made a face. “I imagine he only ever cleans that spot, but he does it really well.”

  Akane giggled. “I’d usually say ‘Don’t be mean,’ but honestly, I’m worried we’ll get stuck to this table and never be able to get out again.”

  “I swear I spotted McDonald’s arches a few miles back down the highway,” said Slack morosely. “Either that or we could order sandwiches from room service again.”

  “Room service would be safer,” agreed Salome.

  “No.” John shook his head. “I told you we had to come in here. This isn’t a whim, honest. That impulse—you know how it is? There’s no resisting it. There’s something in here for us—IIDA knows it, and so do I.”

  “You’re sure the prompt came from IIDA?” asked Akane. “Because there’s nobody here, unless they’re hidden inside that ugly monster dinosaur at the door.”

  Anxious, John turned and scanned the dingy room. She was right. There wasn’t another soul in the place.

  He shrugged. “Then we have to wait. What do you want to eat?”

  “In here?” Salome sniffed. “I’m not sure I want anything.”

  “I want a beer,” announced Slack. “We might as well hang out at the bar, since he cleans that part.” Marching between the tables, he pulled out a stool and hoisted himself onto it like a seasoned barfly as the others joined him. “A bottle of Corona, please, Miguel.”

  “Slack!” hissed Salome, horrified. “You’re way too young!”

  “Miguel won’t care. Will you, Miguel?”

  The sombrero didn’t tilt upward, though the tips of that straggly mustache twitched. “I may be Miguel,” growled a voice, “but that don’t mean you’re getting a beer.”

  “Hey, we’re your only customers,” said Slack cheerfully. “You might as well serve us.”

  There was silence beneath the sombrero. After a moment, the man rummaged beneath the bar and brought out a can of Coke and a smeared glass. He slammed them onto the bar. “Dollar ninety.”

  Slack gasped. “A dollar and ninety cents for warm Coke when I wanted a cold beer?”

  “Correction.” There was amusement in Miguel’s rough voice. “For Ghosts, the warm soda is complimentary. At least, it is when they’ve completed a successful mission.”

  Salome gasped, and Akane gave a squeal of excitement. Slack gaped at Miguel, then slanted his eyes anxiously at John. John himself could only stare, his mind filled with a conflict of emotions.

  “Dad?” he rasped.

  Mikael Laine swept the sombrero from his head and gave a quick bow. Tossing the hat aside, he flipped one side of his poncho onto his shoulder, leaned on the bar, and smiled at all of them.

  “Sorry about the condition of the place,” he said. “It’s not like I’m here very often, and the staff have stopped caring. Or coming into work, for that matter.” He gave a wry shrug.

  “That’s not the point of this place, though, is it?” Salome tilted her head and watched him admiringly. “It’s just a cover. Or a dead drop, maybe?”

  “Miguel. Mikael.” Akane was laughing. “We should have guessed.”

  “I’m just glad I wasn’t too obvious.” Mikael peeled off the fake mustache and flicked it under the bar. “Hello, Son.”

  Despite his lighthearted demeanor, John could sense Mikael’s wary anxiety. And I’m not about to help him, he thought bitterly. The surge of excitement at seeing his father conflicted with his raging resentment. Mikael’s fingers twitched, and he moved a little toward John, but John remained impassive and unmoving, and his father drew back.

  Mikael had changed a lot. But then John hadn’t laid eyes on his dad for a year. He’d never expected to, ever again, since Mikael had let his whole family think he was dead. Dad looked thinner, thought John, and haggard, but he was very much alive. And he let us grieve for him . . .

  “Nice to see you, Dad.” His voice held almost steady. “Haven’t seen you since Eagle Point in Utah. The Vertigo ski run, wasn’t it? You were going fast, right from the top, when the avalanche struck.”

  “John, I—”

  “And then you disappeared in the chaos, and we never saw you again.”

  Mikael gazed at him sadly. “I wanted to see you, John. You know why I couldn’t.”

  Yes. He did. But it didn’t make it hurt any less. John could only shrug.

  The silence was horrific; of course it was Slack who broke it at last. “So did the Lucci Corp mission come from you, Mr. Laine?”

  “Mikael, please.” He looked relieved. “And, yes, that was your first test. Which you passed with flying colors, my Ghosts.”

  “Of course we did,” remarked Slack smugly.

  “Wait. It was just a test?” Salome folded her arms.

  “Yes, but an important one. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to see whether you were up to a challenge because there will be much bigger ones down the line.” Mikael rested his fists on the bar. “But, yeah, this was pretty routine compared to what I’ve got planned. You took down Lucci Corp—and Carl di Lucci, by the way. You know he’s been called in by a Senate committee? A prosecution’s inevitable. It’s public knowledge now that Lucci Corp was falsifying information and handing out bribes to drill in one of the world’s most treasured nature reserves. You exposed that.” Leaning back, he folded his arms and added drolly, “Ideally, you wouldn’t have stolen a hundred-thousand-dollar Tesla and attracted the attention of half the Alaska State Troopers, but I can’t expect miracles.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s a learning process, I guess.”

  Picking up a battered remote, Mikael turned and switched on the small flat-screen behind the bar. The CNN anchor was mouthing something, silent but visibly excited, and footage of oil wells and an expanse of tundra flashed up behind her. The ticker read Di Lucci to testify before House committee. Lucci Corp share price in free fall.

  “You’ve made headline news.” Leaving the TV on mute, Mikael clicked through the channels: ABC, Fox, NBC, CBS. All of them were running the same story. “The world may not know what part you played, you guys, but
I do. I’m proud. And I’m grateful.”

  The tips of Slack’s ears were red with excitement. He blew the blond fringe out of his eyes, grinning uncontrollably.

  “If this is what we can do on a trial run,” he yelled, banging his fist on the bar, “wait till the Ghost Network really gets started!”

  >

  The others had discarded all their suspicions about the food at Miguel’s and were chomping greedily on fajitas, but John couldn’t eat a single bite. He was trying not to stare resentfully at his father, but he couldn’t help it; his appetite had disappeared.

  “We’re officially international Men of Mystery,” declared Slack through a mouthful of chicken and chili.

  “Men?” Salome arched a withering eyebrow. “Let me remind you who drove the car.”

  “And who retrieved the suitcase from the highway,” added Akane, kicking Slack’s shin.

  “Don’t get cocky, Slack,” warned Mikael. “And that applies to all of you, however well you drive and pick locks.” He smiled at Salome. “You’re still in a pretty dangerous situation. It’s not safe to go back to the Wolf’s Den, not for the foreseeable future.”

  Slack paused, his mouth full. “But we will go back eventually. Right?”

  “Doesn’t bother me, since I’ve never even been there,” said Akane. She shrugged, but she sounded a little sulky. “I don’t see why you’re all so attached to it, to be honest.”

  “Sorry, Akane. I know you didn’t get to go there,” said John, his eyes fixed on his father. “But we’ve got to go back. Eva is still there!”

  “And we have to help her.” Salome slapped her fajita back onto her plate, looking truculent. “That girl helped us escape Lykos.”

  “The Wolf’s Den is home,” said Slack firmly. “It just feels like home, and it did right from the start.”

  “Exactly,” said Salome. “We belong there more than Lykos does!”

  “I don’t,” growled Akane under her breath.

  “Akane, you don’t feel it yet,” said Mikael, leaning on the bar, “but when you go there, you’ll know what these three know. That you’re in the right place. Salome, Slack, and John feel a strong connection to the Wolf’s Den because their minds are assigned to its server. It’s their link to IIDA—the supercomputer that’s your second ‘Mom.’” He smiled at her. “The Wolf’s Den is their true home, their sanctuary, and one day you’ll know it’s yours too.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to feel that too.” Akane folded her arms, avoiding the others’ eyes.

  “Not yet,” Mikael told her firmly, drawing back to polish another glass. “Lykos now has full access to Lab 31, where the Center’s supercomputer is. It won’t be long before he has access to the operating system. That’ll give him control of your AI—all of you.”

  All four Ghosts went quiet. After a long, subdued moment, Slack pushed back his barstool. “So Lykos is trying to hack the operating system so that he can control us. Do I have that right?”

  Mikael nodded. “That’s pretty much it.”

  “In that case,” said Slack, “how long do we have?”

  The other three turned to stare at Mikael, as the grim reality of their situation sank in.

  “It’s not possible,” blurted Salome. “Lykos can’t control me. I’m a person. I have my own thoughts. I have free will. Nobody can make me do something I don’t want to do!”

  Mikael averted his eyes. “It’s not that simple, Salome. Yes, you’d fight it, but you know how slickly your programming goes into action. You could fight the impulses and the command prompts, but it’d be tough. And as your mind adapts and the prompts overwhelm your own system—as they eventually would—your programming would kick in spontaneously.”

  “In other words, we’d be essentially reprogrammed.” Akane stared at Mikael.

  Slowly, John shook his head in disgust. “What did you do to us, Dad? What did you think you were doing?”

  Mikael met his eyes at last. He looked remorseful but defiant.

  “I was saving your lives,” he said quietly. “I didn’t foresee the unintended consequences; that’s true. But it was all I could do at the time. There seemed to be such possibilities.”

  “There certainly were,” said Salome frostily.

  Slack shot them all disapproving looks. “Well, I for one am glad to be alive,” he declared. “And, what’s more, it’s exciting more than it’s scary. But I’m going to ask again anyway.” He turned back to Mikael. “How long do we have?”

  Mikael took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said. “I estimate maybe two months.”

  “Two months?” gasped Salome in horror.

  “There’s something you’re not telling us, Dad,” growled John.

  “Yes. There is.” Mikael sighed. “Because I meant what I said: that two months is an estimate. And the truth is Lykos could break the encryption at any moment.”

  “There’s one thing I want you to know,” said Mikael into the heavy, hopeless silence. John remembered that facial expression well; it was the bright-eyed, insistent look his father used to give them when they were hopelessly lost in the wilderness and couldn’t find the map, and Mikael thought the next tiny mud track on the left would get them where they needed to be.

  “What’s that?” John asked, skeptically.

  “Lykos has no way of finding your whereabouts—not till he breaks into that system and directly into you. So until that happens, Eva Vygotsky is safe.”

  Mikael nodded at Salome. “Roy won’t harm her, first because she’s another connection to you and, second, because she’s in possession of the AI herself—or an untested version of it.”

  “You’re sure he won’t hurt her?” asked Salome, biting her lip.

  “No way.” Mikael shook his head. “She’s too valuable to him. He values what’s inside her, anyway. Please don’t worry about Eva—because you’re not going to have the mental energy to spare.”

  “What does that mean?” John narrowed his eyes.

  “It means we’re going to take your training to the next level.” Mikael straightened. “Roy will never stop coming after you, so there’s only one thing you can do—and that’s go after him. Now, you’re not ready for that. You need to train to get to a level where you can safely take him on. You need to take back the Wolf’s Den, and you need to do it before it’s too late.”

  “I suppose we could take him on. Right now.” Slack picked up his knife, flipped it in his palm, and, with a barely perceptible pause, turned and launched it with a smooth overarm motion at the plastic dinosaur. The knife flew straight and true, piercing the dinosaur between the eyes. It stuck there, quivering.

  As they all stared at him, Slack turned back toward them and grinned.

  “I couldn’t throw a knife till right now. I accessed IIDA, and she showed me how. See? I expect we can do anything!”

  Mikael gave him a rueful grin. “Yes. And you’d be flinging knives on Roy Lykos’s behalf if you went in unprepared. My Ghosts, it’s true: you can do pretty much anything, if you set your programming to it. Lykos can’t do that; he doesn’t have your abilities. But he does know how to harness IIDA. And he fully intends to do so. If he gets to you first, he’ll be invincible. And he’ll make you go into battle for him.”

  That silenced Slack. He stared at his plate.

  “You can do anything, Slack,” said Mikael gently. “But don’t you want to do it for the good guys?”

  “So long as we’re sure who the good guys are,” muttered John.

  Salome gave him a sharp look. “I think we know that, John. After what happened to us at the Wolf’s Den, I for one am certain enough.” She turned back to Mikael. “So what’s our next move?”

  With an anxious glance at John, Mikael nodded. “You need the resources of IIDA to help further your training, but you need to access them somewhere else, somewh
ere Lykos can’t. He and his acolytes have infiltrated almost every IIDA terminal in the world, but there’s one Center he doesn’t know about. It’s called the Scarab’s Temple. It’s in the Sahara desert.”

  “Sounds . . . warmer than Alaska,” said Slack hopefully.

  “The Sahara,” said John. He could feel a simmering anger rising inside his throat, threatening to choke him. “So I have to trek around the world again at your command. I’ve already chased my tail around North America for your benefit, and now you want to send me to a desert?” He stood up abruptly, clenching his fists.

  “John, calm down,” said Mikael.

  “It took us all awhile to calm down when we found out you were dead,” John gritted. “Me and Mom and Leona, that is.”

  Silence fell.

  “You’re looking good for a dead man,” John went on. “Mom and Leona cried for days, you know.” He wasn’t going to admit that he had too.

  “John,” said Mikael softly, “I disappeared to protect you.”

  “But you’re here now,” spat John. “So why did you let us wait a whole year? Why do Mom and Leona still have to think you’re dead?”

  “If I told you that, someone could get that information from you.” There was exasperation in Mikael’s voice. “I’ll explain one day, but—”

  “Excuses, excuses.” John gritted his teeth. “You’ve always got another one.” It was all spilling out of him now, unstoppable grief and fury. “Mikael Laine, you’re a liar.”

  Mikael stared at John, his eyes wide and dark with hurt. Salome focused her eyes on the countertop; Akane fixed hers on the muted TV. Slack fiddled with the remains of his fajita, shredding it with fierce concentration.

  John swallowed hard. He knew he should regret his outburst, but he really didn’t.

  “If there was so much danger,” he murmured, “why didn’t you take the initiative and go after Lykos yourself? Why did you have to wait for me and my friends to find out we’re freaks? Freaks you created. Why didn’t you have the guts to destroy Lykos?”

  Mikael took a slight step forward. He looked as if he wanted to reach out, but the countertop was between them, and John was glad. “He was Roy Lykos. Do you know how many friends he has in high places?”