Authors: Peter Jay Black
Charlie nudged him aside, reached up and ran her finger over the cables, muttering to herself.
There was a thud from the main bunker.
‘No time left,’ Jack said.
Charlie disconnected two network cables and the thumping door stopped. ‘See?’ she said. ‘You gotta be gentle.’
Jack stepped back and breathed a sigh of relief. Then there came a grinding sound. ‘
What now?
’
They ran back into the corridor and stopped to listen. The noise was coming from the generator room, so they went inside.
In the centre sat a large diesel generator, fastened to a concrete plinth by thick steel bolts. The generator itself had a large radiator at one end and, at the other, wide pipes ran to the ceiling – one carried away the exhaust, the other dragged down oxygen from above.
Jack looked at the fuel gauge. It was reading half full. That was enough to last them weeks. In the corner of the room were five spare fuel tanks and they’d barely used up the first.
Charlie checked the radiator. It was full of water. Everything was as it should be.
Jack was about to suggest they go back to the main room when the grinding started again. He turned around. The noise wasn’t coming from the generator itself, but from the secondary motor that pumped fresh air into the bunker.
Charlie hurried over to it and crouched down. The motor whirred, raced, slowed, then sped up again. She looked at the meter on the side and frowned.
‘Its power is all over the place,’ she said.
‘Is that controlled by the computers as well?’
She nodded.
‘We’ll have to disconnect it too.’
Charlie stood. ‘We could cut power to the whole bunker. Give it a reboot.’
‘No.’ Jack had a funny feeling that would just cause them a whole lot more trouble. If the computers didn’t boot back up, then what? Who knew what extra problems they’d have to face. ‘Can you cut all the computer-controlled systems?’
‘Everything?’
‘
Everything
.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Yeah, but it will take me ages just to get the air supply up and running again. I’ll have to reroute –’
‘Go on, do it,’ Jack said.
Charlie hesitated, obviously unsure how long fresh air would last way down there. Days? Hours? They had no way to guess.
‘We’ll be fine,’ Jack reassured her, though he wasn’t so convinced.
The motor let out a grinding protest as it sped up again. Without any more delay, Charlie hurried back to the control room and a moment later the motor slowed and stopped.
Jack met her back in the hallway. ‘Now let’s find out what’s been happening.’
They marched into the main room.
‘So,’ Jack said, in as calm a voice as he could muster, ‘what’s up?’
Obi pointed a shaking finger at one of the screens. It was the one with the code they were copying. ‘Like I said, it stopped, right?’
Jack nodded. ‘And you said Proteus is working?’
Obi nodded. ‘Right, so, I was going through the drives, trying to work out where the file had gone –’ he swallowed – ‘and I found it,
here
.’ He clicked the trackerball, brought up a window full of code and looked at it. ‘I think it’s a virus.’
Jack stared at the screen. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, though he could well believe that from what had just happened.
‘I’m telling you,’ Obi said, ‘it is a virus. Stupid thing zapped the hardware and caused the computers to start sending all sorts of commands.’
Jack leant in for a closer look. It did seem like some sort of program, but how could it be? The syntax was wrong for a start. He recognised bits of different languages all jumbled together – Python, C++, Java. Other symbols Jack couldn’t even identify.
Scrolling down, he spotted a few lines of code he did understand. The program had infected the security controls and triggered the commands to the door.
A crease furrowed Jack’s brow.
Charlie said, ‘What are you thinking?’
‘As far as I can tell, Obi’s right – it’s a virus, and it’s probing.’
Wren said, ‘What’s that mean?’
‘See here,’ Jack said, indicating the different lines of code. ‘It’s searching for matching language – it looks like the virus is designed to work out whatever language the newly infected system uses, and cause havoc.’ Jack pulled the keyboard towards him and scrolled through the main code. Parts of the virus were changing, in a permanent state of flux. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. ‘It’s incredible,’ he muttered.
Several fans sped up as the virus continued to infect the bunker’s computers.
Obi sat up in his chair. ‘We need to kill it.’ He reached for the keyboard.
Jack snatched it away from him. ‘Leave it.’
‘It’s messing with the bunker.’
‘Not any more,’ Jack said. ‘Charlie isolated it from our security system.’
Obi frowned, obviously not convinced. ‘It’s still in our system. What do you want to do with it then?’
‘Nothing,’ Jack said. He glanced at the others. They were looking at him like he’d lost his mind. ‘Let’s just see what it tries to do next.’
‘Isn’t that risky?’ Charlie said.
Jack thought the virus was beautiful. He wanted to know how it worked. He admired whoever had designed it. It was a masterpiece. He looked at them all. ‘It’s
safe
.’ Though he couldn’t expect them to understand.
Obi shouted a swear word, which made them all jump.
‘What now?’ Slink said.
Obi pointed at another screen. ‘Look.’
Jack shifted position to see.
It was a satellite image, though fuzzy and tinted green. It showed a bird’s-eye view of a camp in the middle of a desert. Several tents sat in a circle beside two pickup trucks.
Jack could just about make out the silhouette of a man leaning against one of the trucks.
The five of them frowned at the image.
‘Where’s that coming from?’ Jack said.
Obi pointed at one of the other screens that showed an open command box linked directly to Proteus.
For a moment, Jack didn’t understand, then he remembered. They’d been so distracted with the virus, they’d all forgotten the main thing – that they’d cured the problem with Proteus.
From what Jack could tell, Proteus had been infected with that virus, not interference, and somehow, some way, it had moved from Proteus to their own server. Not copied, but actually
moved
.
Now free, Proteus was running at maximum efficiency, and what Professor Markov had failed to do, they’d cured by accident.
But what was Proteus actually doing?
The image vanished and a document popped up in its place. At the top of the page was the logo and address of the Russian embassy in London. Below it was a letter typed in what Jack could only assume were Russian symbols.
‘I’m guessing none of you can read that?’ Jack said.
They all shook their heads.
The image snapped off and was replaced by yet another document. This one had a mug shot of a man with shoulder-length messy brown hair and a thick beard. He wore a dirty off-white shirt, and his cold, penetrating eyes stared back at them.
Underneath the man’s photo was his name:
Simon Grate. Age: 37. Wanted in connection with the Manhattan bank robbery of 3 August. Presumed armed and dangerous. Do not approach. Call –
Before they could finish reading, the image changed to a new satellite photograph – this one of a densely packed city, though it looked less like a city and more like a shanty town. Thousands of red and grey boxes were packed close together on a hillside.
Jack thought he recognised it as Caracas, though he wasn’t sure.
It was at that exact moment that he got it. ‘I know what this is,’ he said, a blast of excitement rising from his stomach. The others looked at him with quizzical expressions. ‘Digital secrets.’
‘Digital what now?’ Charlie said.
‘Secrets.’ Jack pointed at the Proteus display. ‘That’s what it does. Don’t you get it?’ He couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be real. But there it was.
‘Wanna explain?’ Slink said, folding his arms and leaning against Obi’s chair.
Jack took a deep breath. ‘Proteus is a quantum computer, right? Theoretically able to surpass any other computer in the world?’ This was greeted with a mixture of shrugs and nods. ‘Well, one use for a quantum computer could be to have it crack any password, gain access to any network,’ he swallowed, ‘take any secret.’
‘Wait, wait,’ Slink said. ‘That virus was stopping Proteus from working, and we removed it, so now . . . what? Proteus is free to steal secrets from all over the world?’
Jack nodded and watched as realisation dawned on each of their faces. Another document flashed up – this one a letter with
TOP SECRET
stamped across it.
‘Thanks to us,’ he said slowly, ‘Proteus is now the world’s best hacker.’
Jack sat on the sofa and stared into space. The walls danced with the light from the LCDs as they flooded with images – hundreds of top-secret documents. He ignored them and a wave of guilt washed over him like an ice shower. What had they done? They’d cured the problem with Proteus and opened the door to the world’s secrets.
Not the best day he’d ever had.
It wasn’t as if Jack had known what he was doing when he’d asked Obi to copy the code. How was he to know the virus would move itself from Proteus to their own computers? All he wanted to do was have a look at it. In hindsight, it was obvious what the virus was created for – to stop Proteus from working. To stop the government from hacking the rest of the world.
Jack groaned and buried his head in his hands.
Proteus was now free to steal any secret, and the government had access to ultimate power. No nation deserved that power.
Way too much temptation.
Sure, they could use Proteus to hunt down every terrorist and bad guy in the world, bring them to justice, but they could also infringe on people’s human rights. No one would be free from Proteus’s gaze.
Worst of all, the government could use Proteus to track down the Urban Outlaws. They would link Jack to all his previous hacking crimes, and send him to juvenile prison.
God only knows what would happen to the others.
Jack sighed. He needed to fix this before it went too far.
Charlie sat on the sofa opposite. She looked pale. Clearly she understood the gravity of their situation. ‘I isolated the rest of the bunker’s security and air,’ she said in a low voice, as though elevated decibels would bring them more trouble. No worry on that score – it couldn’t get any worse. ‘We should be OK until we can hook it back up to the computers.’
Jack nodded.
Charlie hesitated, then said, ‘What do we do?’
Jack felt so out of control. ‘We need to stop Proteus,’ he said, though he had no idea how to do that.
‘It’s the world’s problem,’ Slink said, dropping on to the sofa next to Charlie, ‘not ours.’
‘Of course it’s
our
problem,’ Charlie said, incredulous.
Slink shrugged. ‘Don’t see how.’
‘How can you not?’
A hint of a smile played on his lips. ‘Let the world burn. It’s governments versus governments. They deserve each other. Let them play their stupid war games.’
‘The thing is,’ Jack said, ‘it isn’t a game, and the rest of the world will burn with them. Including us.’ Though he normally admired Slink’s carefree, ‘anarchy rules’ attitude, now was not the time for it. ‘We’ve unleashed a monster,’ Jack said. ‘The government now have the power to watch us all, every minute of the day. The ultimate big brother.’
A world without any privacy was a horrifying concept.
He had to do something. Perhaps they could –
‘No,’ Obi shouted.
Jack leapt up and hurried over to him. ‘What?’
Obi typed and clicked. He looked at Jack. ‘The connection to Proteus, it’s gone.’
Jack’s stomach sank. The agents must have found the backdoor connection they were using. Jack let out a slow breath. There was nothing else for it – they had to act, and act quickly. ‘We need to destroy Proteus.’
‘
Destroy
it?’ Obi said, aghast. ‘Are you cra–’
Jack held up a hand and looked at Charlie. ‘We have to go back to that building, and we need to get there
fast
.’
Charlie got slowly to her feet. ‘Are you saying . . . ?’
Jack took a breath. He had a feeling he was going to regret this. ‘It’s the quickest way there, right?’
‘I thought you said you didn’t like me using it? You keep going on about how it isn’t safe.’
‘It isn’t,’ Jack said, marching to the door, ‘but we’ll either get there fast or die trying.’ Besides, he thought, right at that moment, he didn’t care.