Zero Sum Read online

  He wanted to ask Leland if something could be done, but his eyes spotted Raj Subramaniam watching him a few workstations away from Leland’s.

  Raj wasn’t a tall or big man, but his billion-dollar presence in the Moscow Mechanics machine room spoke volumes.

  When they had arrived the day before, Cayson had been surprised to find out that Dmitri had originally owned this cybernetics laboratory. He had sold fifty-one percent of it to his Taiwanese business partner.

  Less than twenty-four hours ago, both Cayson and Dmitri had found out that Mr. Bao had sold his majority share to Raj Subramaniam, CEO of a cyber security company that frequently carried out classified assignments for the United States and other world governments.

  And here he was.

  Raj Subramaniam himself. Listed in Forbes as one of the handful of multibillionaires under forty, Raj was a product of Bangalore, India, where his family still resided. His IQ was off the charts and in the clouds, and less than an hour ago, he had just proposed a merger with Binary Systems.

  Seriously.

  Leland had answered for both of them with a resounding no.

  As in, “We want to remain dirt poor. Thank you very much.”

  Cayson thought he should try to change his business partner’s mind soon, but the fact that she was also his cousin now became an obstacle for him.

  He’d have to think about it later, as a set of double doors opened and in ambled Dmitri, accompanied by a bevy of men and women in waiting.

  “You ready for the interface, Cayson, my boy?”

  Instead of answering Dmitri, Cayson searched the group. “Where’s Stella?”

  “Reassigned,” Dmitri replied.

  “What? Where?” Cayson’s fingers gripped the armrest. “Wait a sec. How did they know she’s here?”

  “Everything will be answered soon. Right now, let’s get you plugged in.” Dmitri motioned for Cayson to go with him.

  “I’m not moving until I know what’s going on.”

  “Pouting, I see.” Dmitri shook his head. “If you must know, Stella is with Jake Kessler. You remember him from NCIJTF? They’re going to take down the FBI field office in Chamblee.”

  “So there was a mole after all.”

  Mole Rat.

  And Cayson knew now that Icarus hadn’t been referring to him.

  Thirty-Six

  Cayson had half-expected the private laboratory to be brightly lit like a winter wonderland with snow drifts—

  What?

  Cayson blinked.

  The room was cavernous and painted white, yes, but it was stark and smelled of doom and defeat.

  Only, Cayson wasn’t sure if the defeat was on his side or Molyneux’s side.

  He looked around for a hospital bed, praying that they would put him under so that he wouldn’t feel the crawl of tentacles under his scalp.

  No offense, Icarus.

  Icarus didn’t respond.

  Two lab technicians led him to a changing room, which turned out to be a sterilization chamber meant to scrape every layer of dead skin off of him and clean his entire upper-respiratory system.

  Or so it felt like.

  By the time they popped him out of the chamber on the other side, Cayson was fresh and clean, dressed in snow-white pajamas. He felt oh so sleepy.

  Leland and Dmitri were waiting for him. They stopped chatting when they saw him.

  Leland waved. “This way, cuz.”

  Dmitri waved his arm, and a door slid open.

  The stroll down a hallway made Cayson’s knees weak, as if he were heading toward a lethal injection.

  “Will it hurt?” he blurted.

  “You know the answer,” Dmitri said.

  The hallway narrowed toward an unnumbered door that opened on its own when the trio approached it.

  Inside was another whole cave full of buzzing worker bees—

  Bees? Huh?

  “I’m losing my mind.” Cayson stared at the dozens of busy lab technicians and workers swarming the heart of Moscow Mechanics.

  “Hang in there,” Leland said. “It’ll be over soon.”

  Cayson frowned. “The next time a new potential customer calls, remind me that it’s not worth five million dollars.”

  “It’s not worth any amount, cuz. The love of money is the root of all evil.”

  “You talked to Byron?” Cayson remembered the counseling session with Byron Moss from church shortly after Cayson had failed to kill himself.

  For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

  “You know it’s in the Bible, cuz. First Timothy somewhere. God had first dibs on wisdom.”

  Cayson nodded. He felt determined that if he survived this, he’d read the Bible more. Sign up for every ministry opportunity at church. Walk on the straight and narrow path.

  Propose to Stella as soon as possible.

  His eyes widened. How did that thought get into his head?

  Thirty-Seven

  In the center of the cybernetics laboratory, the two owners of Moscow Mechanics waited silently as the lab technicians ushered Cayson to a row of pods, where he assumed that Icarus would be linked to the main server conducting the raid on MedusaNet.

  Passing by Dmitri and Raj, Cayson nodded, as if saying his farewell.

  “Oh, don’t look so grim, friend,” Dmitri said. “It’s not that bad.”

  Raj concurred. “It’s not like you’d totally die.”

  “Totally die? As in, there’s such a thing as partially die?” Cayson blurted.

  Dmitri patted him on the shoulder. “Leland will be with you.”

  “Leland? No. Keep my cousin out of this. She has to go home alive, not brain damaged.”

  Raj pointed to another pod. “She’s already buckled in. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

  “Why? What for?”

  “She’s going to tether to you. Buddy system and all that.” Raj waved.

  Was that money speaking?

  “No,” Cayson snapped. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m invested in this,” Raj explained. “I don’t want either of you to die. In fact, I still want to buy Binary Systems and have you work for me.”

  “Work with you, not for you,” Leland shouted from her pod.

  “There, my business partner has spoken.” Cayson managed a nervous smile.

  “We’ll need to work on soundproofing the pods better,” Raj said to his lab manager. The woman made some notes on her tablet.

  As Cayson was entering his pod, he saw the logo on the door.

  DARPA.

  “Have we come full circle?” he asked no one in particular.

  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had invented the prototype implants that preceded Icarus for the purpose of creating supersoldiers for the Department of Defense.

  Unfortunately, it had fallen into enemy hands. And one of those modified implants had found its way into Cayson’s head.

  And back into the lap of DARPA, the original incubator of them all.

  “Icarus, are you okay?” Cayson didn’t know why he asked.

  I’m not Okay. I’m Icarus.

  “Never mind.”

  Cayson sat down and waited. He felt a tickle behind his ear when the Bluetooth connection came to life.

  “No helmet for me?” Cayson joked.

  The pretty technician with the super-straight teeth chuckled. “That’s so last century.”

  She shut the door behind him, and he was alone in the dark in a super-cold pod and with a sudden need to go to the little boys’ room.

  Suddenly a virtual screen appeared on the pod wall to the left of the workstation in front of Cayson.

  “You okay?”

  Dmitri’s comforting voice surprised Cayson. He had known Dmitri to be hands-on, but hadn’t the senior Russian hacker retired from cybernetics and chasing after cyberterrorists?

&nbs
p; Dmitri looked like he was in another pod similar to Cayson’s. However, on Dmitri’s table was a blob of green slime.

  Why do they all have to be green?

  “What’s that?” Cayson asked.

  “What was in Dr. Reyes’s head,” Dmitri replied.

  “Another Icarus?”

  “No. This one’s called Archimedes.”

  Before Cayson could ask any more, another virtual screen on the other side of his workstation flickered to life.

  On screen, Leland waved. “You ready, cuz?”

  Before Cayson could reply, Leland spoke again. “Okay then. Let’s go take down the gorgon.”

  Thirty-Eight

  Forty-six or forty-seven hours later, Cayson had gotten used to his new environment, where Icarus was getting closer to leaving his head, hopping on a data transfer cable, and making his residence inside a DARPA workstation connected to Cayson’s head in this sterile cybernetics lab.

  It still baffled Cayson that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had created Icarus.

  The entire project had been so hush-hush that, Cayson was not given the entire picture. He could protest, but at this point, he just wanted Icarus out of his head.

  What did Dmitri know?

  One thing was certain: Dmitri had called DARPA instead of NSA.

  Another thing was certain: DARPA was very interested in shutting down MedusaNet.

  Something could be going on between Moscow Mechanics and DARPA.

  But Cayson wouldn’t be privy to it.

  Right now, a bigger problem hung over them like the sword of Damocles.

  An entourage of DARPA cybernetics specialists and an array of Rhinotec hackers from Raj’s security company were all still at it, tinkering on the virtual padlocks that wrapped around MedusaNet like a tightly fitting exoskeleton.

  There was no way in.

  There was no way out.

  In the midst of it all, Cayson didn’t want them to sacrifice Icarus to destroy MedusaNet. Surely there was some other way?

  But Icarus was the key, the backdoor.

  Archimedes, the other implant, had been damaged when Dr. Reyes’s head had exploded in Dmitri’s farmhouse.

  Icarus was the only perfect specimen.

  Cayson closed his eyes. “Icarus, are we best buds?”

  Bud? As in organism? Plant?

  “Never mind.” Cayson wiped trickles of sweat off the base of his jawline. When he looked down at his palm, he realized it wasn’t sweat.

  “Dmitri?” His voice cracked.

  Dmitri turned toward the camera on the virtual screen. “Yes?”

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “What?” Leland gasped on the other screen.

  Cayson felt a headache coming. He began to pray.

  And thought of Stella and their kiss in the meadows in the middle of nowhere in North Georgia. Her dress fluttered in the cool October breeze.

  God, don’t let me die before I tell her what I need to tell her.

  The door behind him opened.

  One of the DARPA specialists peeked in. “Let’s have a look.”

  Cayson wanted to get out of his seat, but that wasn’t why they opened the door. Before Cayson realized it, she had withdrawn the syringe from the base of his head.

  “W-what was that?” Cayson asked.

  “Painkiller. It won’t help, but you’ll think it does.”

  “W-what?” Cayson felt dizzy.

  Then he felt faint.

  The pod disappeared from his view.

  Thirty-Nine

  When Cayson awoke, he was lying down in a hospital bed similar to the one at VenomLabs. He couldn’t remember when it was. September? October? It was all a blur, a veritable mash in his brain.

  Icarus.

  For a moment, he wondered if that had been his own thought or whether Icarus had just spoken to him, calling its own name.

  He stared at the ceiling, afraid to move.

  Instinctively, he reached up to touch behind his ear.

  Nothing sticky. Instead, he felt a Band-Aid there.

  Great.

  “Icarus?” Cayson spoke louder now.

  Or had he actually thought the word earlier rather than spoken it?

  No reply from Icarus.

  He felt alone with only the EKG and other machines around the hospital bed.

  “Can I get some water, please?” he asked no one.

  And water came in a tray, carried by a cybernetics lab technician, followed by familiar faces.

  Dmitri, Leland, and Raj—whom Cayson hadn’t talked too much.

  “How are you feeling?” Leland limped toward her cousin.

  “I should be asking you that.” Cayson pointed to her leg, remembering the bombing at VenomLabs—whenever that had been. “How’s that foot?”

  “Nothing a few stitches and painkillers can’t handle.”

  “Yeah, you’ve always had a higher tolerance for pain than I do. You probably took after your father’s side there. All the Yangs I know prefer our lives painless.” Cayson returned the empty glass to the lab worker.

  Leland looked alarmed. “Are the implants hurting your head?”

  “You think?” Cayson chuckled. "Then again, it’s not as bad as just now.”

  “Just now?” Dmitri knotted his eyebrows. “Just now when?”

  “When my head was bleeding in the pod.”

  “That was four days ago, cuz,” Leland said.

  Four days?

  “You were out for four days,” Raj added. “We could not risk your death.”

  “Oh thank you, kind sir.” Cayson closed his eyes. “Is Icarus still in my head?”

  “We dare not touch anything, obviously.”

  “Then why is Icarus not responding?”

  No one could answer him.

  Dmitri patted his shoulder. “Why don’t you rest? MedusaNet can wait.”

  They were all about to leave him, when Cayson asked for his cousin to stay.

  Leland sat at the foot of his bed. “This looks comfy.”

  “When was the last time you slept?” Cayson asked.

  Leland didn’t reply.

  “Sleep deprivation can kill you.”

  “I’ll sleep when this is over,” Leland said. “Let’s try talking to Icarus again.”

  Cayson did. “He’s not responding.”

  “Maybe he went to sleep.” Leland laughed.

  “Now that’s a thought. Icarus, wake up.”

  Mole Rat.

  Chameleon.

  “That worked,” Cayson said. “But I don’t get what he’s saying. He’s repeating words he’d told me before.”

  “What words?” Leland was on her feet now.

  “Mole Rat. Chameleon.”

  Leland called for her DARPA colleagues. She repeated the words.

  “Decode it inside MAPL. Let’s see what we find.”

  Cayson wondered about that interaction. After DARPA left, he asked Leland about it.

  “Maple what?” he asked.

  “MAPL. I’ll tell you later what it stands for, but it’s an exaflop server—maybe even yottaflops, but they won’t tell me.”

  “And you have access to it?”

  Leland nodded.

  “You ordering them around now?”

  “I was going to tell you soon, cuz. While you were out for four days, I had to get us paid, you know?”

  She had a head for business, just like Auntie Yang. Cayson had never been prouder. “And?”

  “Like I said, you were out. So you can negotiate the terms later, if you don’t like it.”

  “Terms? What terms?”

  “I got us a contract with DARPA. I mean, we’re here, right? So we need to be paid, obviously. Overtime and all that too.”

  “Right.”

  “Glad you gave me the majority share of the company?” Leland asked.

  One percent.

  That had been all it had taken for Cayson to lose control.

  Then again…r />
  He nodded. “You’re the reason Binary Systems hasn’t declared bankruptcy. You’re good.”

  “No, cuz. God is good. His mercy is upon us.”

  “We might survive this yet.”

  The doors opened again, and DARPA was back.

  Leland turned to Cayson and mouthed yottaflops.

  The DARPA lady—Cayson reminded himself to ask for her name later—said something that Cayson hadn’t expected at all.

  “Mole Rat and Chameleon mapped to the original functions we created in DARPA for the prototype.”

  “The prototype with no name?” Cayson asked.

  “It has a name, but we can’t tell you.”

  “Will we find out later?”

  “Irrelevant,” she said.

  Leland cut into their conversation. “What original functions?”

  “Effectively, Icarus is the kill switch.”

  “For MedusaNet?” Leland asked.

  The DARPA lady nodded.

  Cayson stared straight ahead. “A kill switch in my head.”

  “Okay, we can do this,” Leland concluded.

  Cayson looked at his cousin. “If we’re right, MedusaNet dies. But if we’re wrong?”

  “Then you die,” Leland said.

  Forty

  Five weeks they had hacked into MedusaNet, the virtual private network was dead, and Cayson was implant-free. He missed Icarus, but DARPA had promised to give him a sanitized personal version of it, whatever that meant.

  Meanwhile, Cayson had another problem at Binary Systems.

  Kelvin Gallagher was still missing.

  Leland continued to work with Raj Subramaniam, whose Rhinotec company was now seeking to buy VenomLabs.

  Dmitri agreed to stay another week in Atlanta to help them hack into MedusaNet and shut it down. Well, that one week had extended to another four.

  Altogether, it had taken ten weeks, ending in December.

  By then, Stella had gone deep undercover, and Cayson had no idea where she had gone to. Dmitri had promised to find out—in the spring.

  Still, as far as Cayson’s work at hand went, they had gotten it done, Dmitri and Leland—the professor and his protégé—together with Cayson, Raj, and a pack of hackers who didn’t know what sleep was.