Chapter 25
Red lights splashed behind every window of the two-thousand-foot Tower, their glow easily visible in the waning twilight.
A ghostly klaxon wail drifted over the grass as Jason slung himself off the swing and set off toward the Tower at a run, followed closely by Sprite.
As they neared the security perimeter, they met a panicked crowd arriving at it from the other direction, stumbling, their clothes in disarray, looking over their shoulders at the crimson-lit Tower overshadowing them.
As the tide of people rolled toward him, Jason braced and raised his phone.
“Security! Special security! Let me through!” Then the wave hit, and he was jostled and thumped and almost lost the phone, but he kept yelling.
Another voice took up the yell: “Let him in! Let the guy in uniform in!” More voices joined, and the crowd parted enough for Jason to lower his head and charge forward.
Nobody realized his uniform was actually prison garb, and the National Guard were too overwhelmed to look closely or care.
He burst out the far side of the crowd and looked back to see if Sprite had made it through, only for her to charge past, sprinting toward the Tower. He followed.
As they neared the Tower, the roaring of the escape chutes became audible, their exits dispensing disheveled escapees at a steady rate.
But the wide steps up to the atrium were already empty, and so was the atrium itself.
Jason stumbled once and splashed when he put a foot down in a water channel, but he was close behind Sprite as she slipped into an open and waiting elevator.
As soon as he was inside, the door slid closed and the elevator shot upward at what felt like faster than the normal rate.
The red lights on the floors going past flicked across Sprite’s face and body and were reflected as descending sparks in her dark eyes.
“We have a problem!” Dunne-Carr’s face appeared in her chat window, pale and wide eyed. “Norman didn’t evacuate. The NOC is still running.”
Jason and Sprite exchanged looks with eyes as wide as Dunne-Carr’s. “Phreak,” Sprite said softly.
“The NOC’s been locked down,” Grandma said from her window. “Norman knows a dirty bomb is a weapon of assassination, not destruction. He’s gambling he’ll be safe here, where he can control the situation. But he’s locked in with us, so his office is still clear.”
“But the NNA agent, Tavion, he ran out,” Chloe said. “Right before the door locked.”
“We gotta move fast, then,” Sprite said. She bounced on her heels, watching the door, waiting for it to open. When it did, she slipped out ahead of Jason. “This way!”
“Right with you,” Jason said, and set off at a run down the wide, empty hallway, falling in step beside her.
He glanced at her as they rounded a corner and got a quick flash of her face: brows drawn, skin flushed, parted lips pulling in air in heavy breaths, dark hair streaming.
Then he looked forward again—and skidded to a stop.
Bruno Tavion stood in the corridor before them, arms crossed, face impassive under his dark glasses. “Aaaah,” he rumbled. “You ain’t social-engineering me, young son.”
“Get past him!” Sprite cried, and Jason could see that Bruno was standing before a waterfall-flanked double door with the words Dr. Andrew Norman, Director across the frosted glass.
But Bruno was already moving, his hand slipping into his jacket, and Jason knew he couldn’t let him complete that motion.
He dropped his own hand to his pocket and rushed forward.
As his hand came out with his phone extended toward Bruno, Bruno’s hand redirected and clamped down on his wrist with a grip as firm as steel.
“This old dog,” Bruno growled, “learns new tricks.”
“But which trick?” Jason said. There was no Taser on this phone. He’d never had a chance to replace it. Bruno registered this at the same moment that Jason’s free hand slid into Bruno’s jacket and grabbed the gun there.
Jason threw himself backward. The gun came free—but was immediately caught in Bruno’s big fist, the barrel held just off to one side, and Jason twisted painfully as his backward dive was arrested.
Getting his feet under him again, he tried to knee Bruno, but the big man turned his body sideways, and Jason’s knee rebounded harmlessly off his thigh.
Bruno’s hand locked around Jason’s neck.
Jason’s eyes bugged wide. He couldn’t see Bruno’s eyes, but the man’s thick lips were compressed.
The gun began to twist in Jason’s hands; the trigger guard caught his knuckle, and his wrist turned painfully, while Bruno’s grip on his neck tightened.
Jason’s breath ebbed. He tried to jerk his head backward, but that only made Bruno squeeze harder.
Darkness seeped into the edges of his vision.
Sprite gave a shout and leaped onto Bruno’s back. It was a spectacular, gymnastic leap; she put a hand on his shoulder and scaled his back in a single fluid movement. Bruno didn’t sway. What was the dude made of, stone?
Sprite wrapped her hands around Bruno’s glasses. He jerked in surprise, and Sprite lost her balance and rolled off. But Bruno had shifted just enough, and Jason’s knee rose, driven by all the strength he had left.
Bruno apparently hadn’t learned enough new tricks to start wearing a cup.
He grunted, and his grip on Jason’s throat and wrist loosened for just a moment.
Jason used that moment to tear free. And then he was screaming something at Bruno, gun extended, feeling the trigger flex under his forefinger, and Bruno was backing away, hunched over, making calm-down motions with his hands.
“Tie him up!” Sprite shouted. Jason tried to tell her she should do it while he covered Bruno, but the words came out as incoherent gasps. Bruno turned and sprinted away. Jason held the gun on him but didn’t fire. He couldn’t shoot the man in the back.
“Inside!” Sprite said, bouncing impatiently on her toes outside Norman’s office.
Jason reached for the knob. It didn’t turn. “I thought you said it’d be unlocked!”
“It should be! He never locks it because he knows the terminal is secure.”
“Well, he did today.” He stepped back, sizing the door up.
The hinges were on the other side, so it opened inward.
“Stand back,” he said, waving Sprite away.
He took a step forward, planted his left foot, and drove his right into the door near the knob.
It rebounded off, and he stumbled backward.
“Phreak!” he screamed as he put his weight on the foot and a jolt of pain shot through it.
“I felt it give a little,” he said, squaring up again.
“The door, or your foot?”
He kicked again, ignoring the fresh jolt of pain as his foot made contact, and this time the door splintered inward and the latch popped.
“Nice work!” Sprite said.
“This isn’t my usual type of hacking,” Jason said, shoving the door open. “I’m used to cracking encryption, not doors or NNA agent nuts.” He half limped behind Sprite into the spacious office he remembered from his virtual “job interview” a million years ago. “How long do we have?”
“Till Bruno brings help?” Sprite led the way to Norman’s desk. “Dunno. I just hope it’ll be enough.” She stopped beside the rich leather-and-aluminum swivel chair behind the desk and pointed at it. “Sit.”
Jason set Bruno’s gun on a corner of the desk, flung himself into the chair, and ran his hands along the desk’s glass surface. It came alive . . . with a login screen. His shoulders slumped.
“Give the System a sec to work,” Sprite said, and a moment later the screen changed to show the message Record new admin biometrics and a row of fingerprint icons.
Jason pressed his hands over the fingerprints, and the screen flashed and then dissolved into a series of windows and icons.
“Congratulations,” Sprite said. “You are now an OverNet admin.”
Jason scanned the open windows. Laid out before him was .
. . everything. “It’s all right here. Every network, every device in the country.
” They were nested in perfect hierarchy, every connection on every network from BankNet down to WasteNet, listed by location and real-name MeNetID. “Norman can see everything.”
“OverNet’s not our focus,” Sprite said.
“Hang on.” He did a quick search for “Bruno Tavion.” Nineteen results came up.
The top two were in DC. A quick check revealed them to be Bruno’s phone and smartglasses.
Jason opened the glasses and clicked a prominent button labeled Live Feed.
“Holy phreak,” he said, as Bruno’s vision opened in a window on the desktop. “Norman can spy on anyone.”
“The System, Ghost,” Sprite said. “Find the System.”
But Jason’s eyes were held by what was happening in the feed.
Bruno was in the lobby of the Tower, surrounded by men in body armor and helmets with Capitol Police SWAT stenciled on their chests.
His arms and hands were in frame, gesturing, as the men around him nodded.
One man held out a wicked-looking black shape: an assault rifle. Bruno’s hands closed around it.
“Ghost!” Sprite said. “This is save-the-world time, not playtime!”