“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Loki Stormbringer is headed this way with an army of machines. There are two dozen darknet factions on his heels. Once Loki’s army is gathered, this whole place will be a war zone.”
“The Loki?” She sat on the arm of a nearby sofa and shook her head. “I can’t leave, Jon.”
“Why not? This isn’t your—”
“Look, you have no idea how happy I am to see you, and I can’t tell you how much it touches me that you risked your life to rescue me. But I can’t go. The plutocrats are planning to execute some sort of cyber warfare attack. Physically storming this ranch won’t stop it. I need to figure out what they’re really up to and stop them. Luckily, I have some clues.” She brought him over to a huge stack of documents on a nearby desk. “They’ve given me tech documentation on Operation Exorcist—but something about it doesn’t make sense.”
“Operation Exorcist?”
“Yes. Remember the Destroy function of the Daemon—the command that destroys all data in a Daemon-infected corporation? Well, they’ve come up with a blocker.”
“How the hell did—?”
“They figured out that if they use a formatstring hack they could inject executable code through the tax ID function parameter. It puts the Destroy function into an infinite loop so that it doesn’t return a value.”
“Meaning the Destroy command won’t be issued . . . making the Daemon harmless to them.”
She nodded.
“Can they really inject it into all the Daemon-infected networks?”
“The Ragnorok module is a Web API. They can invoke the function from anywhere.”
“Jesus . . .”
“They could do it with a script. They’re using the Daemon’s own high availability against it.”
Ross gestured to the piles of technical documents marked “Top Secret.” “But you said something’s not adding up.”
“Yes. I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours examining all this, and it just looks too rosy.”
“A ruse?”
She nodded. “Jon, they’re planning on launching their Daemon-blocker attack from thousands of machines, and then they’re going to send in police and paramilitary strike teams to seize tens of thousands of data centers around the world—all at once. It would easily be the largest covert operation launched in the history of mankind—by several orders of magnitude—and I don’t see how an international operation this size could be kept secret.”
“You mean from the Daemon?”
“I mean from anyone.”
She picked up a sheaf of documents. “So how am I supposed to believe this? It’s not credible.”
“So Operation Exorcist is a lie.”
“Or we don’t know what the real Operation Exorcist is. They’ve basically put me under house arrest here to read through propaganda—so when things go to hell, I can attest to some congressional subcommittee how diligently Weyburn Labs and Korr were working toward defeating the Daemon.”
She threw up her hands. “But I saw armies of corporate soldiers down at the airfield. Something serious is about to go down.”
Ross grimaced. “Darknet news feeds have noticed private security forces moving into position to defend property—office towers, media centers, telecom infrastructure, and utilities. Also high-end gated communities.”
They sat for a few moments contemplating what that meant. The sound of murmuring television voices came from downstairs.
Ross looked at her. “So I can’t convince you to leave?”
“I care about you more than you know, but my duty is here.”
He grinned slightly in respect of her choice, then he moved over to the fifty-inch plasma screen mounted in a hutch in front of the bed. He pulled the television away from the wall on its swivel mount.
“What are you doing?”
He produced a small electronic device from one of his harness pockets, and uncoiled an HDMI cable, which he used to connect the device to the television.
“I’m opening the surveillance system’s back door to other darknet operatives so that they can help us collectively keep an eye on what’s going on here on the ranch. We’ll have a better shot at finding anything important with tens of thousands of people searching with us.” He spoke into D-Space. “Rakh, requesting high-priority Thread: review all camera imagery at Sky Ranch for evidence of complicity in current social disturbances. Publicize findings, ASAP.”
In a few moments, the screen showed an hourglass with a label reading: Number of Respondents. The number rapidly incremented into the thousands, gaining speed by the second.
“So . . . thirteen thousand people are searching the surveillance system for suspicious activity?”
He nodded. “This ranch is on a maximum-priority Thread—we’re all concerned about it. And it doesn’t hurt to have a good reputation score when summoning a smart mob.” He peered at the screen. “Past twenty thousand now.”
She was stunned. “This is amazing.” She closely watched the screen.
Almost immediately a “suspicious” item came up on the screen as a link. It read simply: Broadcast News Set—by dPooley.
“They found something.”
“Thanks, dPooley. . . .” Ross clicked on the video link and brought up a live surveillance feed of a full-sized television sound stage, complete with green screens. The set looked quiet.
“A news studio.”
Ross clicked out to an overhead map of all the cameras in that location, bringing up a 3-D model of the building it was in. “Hang on a second, I have an idea.”
Philips pointed at the overhead map. “Look, they’ve got a satellite farm. This is a complete broadcasting facility.”
Ross brought up another view—this one of the producer’s control room. It showed an array of large screens as well as a window onto the studio beyond. “Do you think they’re creating the news here at the ranch?”
Philips shook her head. “It’s just one studio, and the news is running 24/7 on a dozen channels at once. This has some other purpose.”
“Let’s roll this back in time.”
“We can do that?”
“Yeah. One of the big selling points of the Beholder system was detecting recurring patterns over time—people casing embassies, that sort of thing. It can store huge amounts of video. Here . . .” Ross moved his hands, interacting with invisible controls. “I’m going to run backward to the last time there was activity in this control room.”
The image of the control room stayed relatively unchanged, even though the lighting changed very slightly, indicating a passage of time and voltage fluctuations in the overhead lights. Suddenly the room sprang into life, and there were several people in the control booth. Ross slowed down the rewind and kept rolling it back until there was a hand signal being given to a distant anchor person sitting at the green screen desk. He clicked the video into play mode.
Suddenly audio came through and they could clearly see the computer-enhanced image of the anchor on the central control board screen.
Philips shot a look at Ross. “Anji Anderson!”
He nodded. “So it is. . . .”
“Then she’s here at the ranch.”
On-screen Anderson was delivering the news next to a disturbing graphic with the word “Cybergeddon” in bold, terrifying letters. She was in midsentence. . . .
“—responsible for this unprecedented attack on modern civilization. It appears that a cataclysmic loss of corporate data has occurred. The New York and American Stock Exchanges have been closed, along with most other world stock exchanges. Again, we have no word on whether this happened during the blackout, before the blackout, or just before. But if you’re just now joining us, there has apparently been a cyber attack of unprecedented magnitude against the world electrical grid. Most of North America, Europe, and parts of Asia have been without power for the last seventy-two hours.”