Colonel Griffin sighed in exasperation and slapped the report in front of him. He could feel his blood pressure rising almost as if an analog gauge was plugged into an artery.

 "Agent Murphy," he gritted through his teeth, "How the heck did a bunch of high school kids gain access to a presumably secure OAT asset? I say 'presumably' because it turned out to be anything but secure."

"It's complicated, sir," Agent Megan Murphy answered stoically. She knew her boss's ire wasn't directed at her. Not yet, anyway.

Griffin made an effort to control his irritation, "Try me."

"It was our need-to-know policy, sir," Megan continued, choosing her words carefully, "a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. While the RHIC is currently funded by our department, only Dr. Hale - the head of the program - was privy to that information, and not her team members. And not even Dr. Hale was aware of our real interest. Based on what we could salvage from the Protvino archives, we had no reason to anticipate wormhole generation at anything less than 500 MeV. The RHIC wormhole appears to have been generated at 345 MeV according to Dr. Hale's data. Her team members saw no reason for secrecy. It was only when the safety incident was routinely forwarded to us as the funding agency, that I moved to stop Dr. Hale from making a public announcement."

 "So... its actually our fault?" Griffin looked like he had swallowed strong medicine.

"That is one interpretation, sir," Megan nodded diplomatically.

"And the school?" Griffin frowned.

"Contained," Megan sighed, "I think."

It had been a formidable effort to cajole and intimidate the staff and student witnesses into signing non-disclosure forms backed by the Atomic Energy Act. Some of the students had parents who were lawyers. It had gotten a bit ugly, but that was nothing new to Megan. Now that she was finally back inside the Office of Advanced Technologies, she tugged at her ponytail, adjusting it in an unconscious gesture. She liked to keep her hair tidy for field work, except when dealing with civilians. Her colleagues had remarked that she looked so much more approachable (and by insinuation more attractive) with her hair down. And Megan had reluctantly concluded that civilans were a bit more cooperative whenever she had allowed her brilliant red hair to cascade over her shoulders. But the concession to appearances irked her.

"So...about Patient Zero," Griffin flipped through her report, pausing to read the MRI summary, "No signs of frontal lobe reconstruction? No potential for an IQ excursion?"

"None that we can see," Megan shook her head.

"I suppose that's for the best," Griffin drummed his fingers thoughtfully and chuckled without humor, "it didn't work out so well for the Soviets after all. I'd prefer one of our agents to make First Contact with a mind-altering monstrosity from beyond space-time."

 "But..." Megan hesitated, and continued quickly as Griffin raised an eyebrow, "there is evidence that the parietal lobe was tampered with. Patient Zero might be processing his sensation of touch differently."

"Touch?" Griffin looked startled.

"According to our neurologist-on-retainer," Megan shrugged, "there is potential for massive increase in tactile bandwidth. But the doctor couldn't say what that might even mean. I ordered a series of functional MRI tests with Patient Zero holding objects with varying textures. His parietal lobe showed no unusual spikes."

 "Hmm... strange," Griffin frowned, "In any case, it's best we keep an eye on him. Have you identified a potential asset at his school?"

"I believe so," Megan nodded slowly, "It will be expensive, since we're asking a staff member to risk their job and possibly their pension by breaking student confidentiality rules."

"Do it," Griffin waved his hand dismissively, "We have a budget surplus this year. You know what they say about a surplus. Use it or lose it."

The Office of Advanced Technologies was officially just a branch of DOE's Office of Intelligence/Counter-Intelligence. In practice, OAT was answerable directly to the Energy Secretary and boasted an operating budget that caused the larger intelligence community to drool with envy.

 "Sir," Megan blurted, "why are we doing this?"

"Hmm?" Griffin, "oh... this tactile upgrade may not be so innocent. I admit it's hard to see what harm can come from faster sensory processing. And your tests on the kid don't seem to show even that. But we are dealing with superior beings. It may be trivial for them to slip one under the radar, so to speak. If the boy suddenly manifests savant-like abilities, I don't want us to be caught napping."

"I understand, sir," Megan bit her lip, sounding plaintive, "but I meant... why are we running this project at all? Why Omega-Delphi? OAT is in the business of shutting down existential threats, not activating them!"

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Not quite, Agent Murphy," Griffin shook his head, "Part of our job is containing nasties like artifcial general intelligence and biological smart-munitions. And we've been fairly successful on that front so far. But we are also charged with pursuing capabilities that our enemy already possesses."

"Which enemy would that be, sir?" now Megan just looked confused.

Griffin didn't answer her directly, but pressed a button on his speaker phone, "Pam? Yes, please send in Dr. West." He looked up at Megan, "I think you make a good point on the dangers of over compartmentalization within our team. It's time you were briefed on broader matters linked to Omega-Delphi."

The man who walked in, carrying a laptop, was young and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that wasn't exactly business casual. Griffin waved his hands in introduction, "Agent Murphy... meet Dr. West, our game-theory consultant. He used to work for the Rand corporation. Dr. West... meet Agent Murphy. She now has clearance to the GORGON analysis. Start from the beginning, for her benefit, will you?"

Megan felt a flash of annoyance that a private contractor was working on classified material that she hadn't originally been cleared for, even if her reaction was a tad irrational.

Dr. West extended his hand with a warm smile, his eyes twinkling, "Call me Jonathan."

Jonathan had wavy brown hair that hadn't been properly combed and a face that some women might find alluring. Megan wasn't some women. If the pretty boy thinks he can charm me, thought Megan, he can think again.

"Call me Agent Murphy," growled Megan, returning his hand shake with a squeeze that made his bones creak. She had the satisfaction of seeing him wince.

"Nothing personal, Dr. West," Griffin chuckled, "Agent Murphy has used up all of her considerable charm on civilians this week. She has none left to spare for you."

"Right," Jonathan coughed nervously and opened the laptop to begin his presentation.

 The first slide was titled 'Global ORGanisation for Optimizing Nations (GORGON) : Threat Analysis'. Jonathan stepped through the slides. A photo of a flat bed rail car inside a curving concrete tunnel with the caption 'UNK Protvino'.

"It's fairly common knowledge that the Russian Institute for High Energy Physics - the UNK - carried out high energy particle experiments in 1996," Jonathan looked at Megan. She nodded impatiently.

Click. A preteen girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, peered out of the faded photo wearing an old fashioned Russian school uniform and brown hair arranged in a crown braid. The caption said 'Alyona. T'.

"The UNK suceeded in creating a stable wormhole at 500 MeV," Jonathan continued, "and the daughter of one of the scientists was accidentally exposed to it. Much like the recent incident at Brookhaven."

Megan leaned forward. She hadn't known that.

"Alyona's parents didn't inform the authorities, fearing that their daughter would be taken away. Understandably so."

Click. A photo of two bodies, a man and a woman, their heads covered in blankets.

"Two years later, Alyona's parents were found dead and their daughter missing. Their brains had been consumed. An official investigation concluded Alyona to be the most likely suspect, and an order issued for her capture."

"What?" Megan asked startled, "she ate their brains?"

"Well, we don't know what she did with them," admitted Jonathan, "but she appears to have assimilated them in a manner of speaking. Alyona's mother was an ex-Spetsnaz operative. When Alyona was captured on the run, it took an entire police squad to subdue her. Two men died in her capture. A police report claimed that Alyona used combat tactics that were eerily remniscent of the Spetsnaz."

"Couldn't her mother have just taught her?" Megan interrupted.

"It's possible," Jonathan nodded, "but Alyona's school record described her as disinterested in self-defense or military instruction. She was very much a geek by all accounts. A brain scan ordered at capture showed significant reorganization in her frontal lobe. When interrogated for motive, she is reported to have claimed that she simply wanted to get know her parents better. In any case she was sentenced to an asylum for the criminally insane, from where she escaped three months later."

Click. A photo of a young woman, perhaps in her early thirties, wearing an overcoat and flanked by uniformed guards. She was boarding a military helicopter.

"Chairwoman Katrina. Codename Syblline. Head of GORGON high command. Many analysts dismiss her as just a spokesperson, a figurehead for whoever is really running GORGON. Not so. Facial analysis give us high confidence that Katrina and Alyona are the same person. We think she founded GORGON."

 "What's her game?" Megan asked, a bit startled.

"GORGON's end goal is unknown," Jonathan turned away from the laptop to face Megan, "but territorial expansion is certainly one of their - her-  immediate goals. And we don't know how to stop her."

"What?" Megan couldn't hide her surprise now, "but GORGON is no match for NATO!"

"Perhaps not in a military sense," Jonathan said earnestly, "but consider this. Every covert operation or military strike against GORGON has failed. Either by us or the Russians. GORGON always knows when and where we are going to attack."

"GORGON shipped the mutilated bodies of our special ops teams. To their families," Griffin interjected savagely, "Very considerate of them. And our operatives' brains had been surgically scooped out."

"Is our operational security that compromised?" Megan sounded shocked.

"That's we thought at first," Jonathan nodded, "but GORGON seemed to know of our attacks even before they had been hatched. They were predicting us. We think GORGON has cutting edge prediction tools. Or Syblline herself understands us with such superhuman accuracy that she can guess our every move. That's also why our diplomatic efforts to unite the rest of the world against GORGON has fared no better."

"That's why she's removing brains," Megan whispered, "for intel. But how the heck do we fight an enmey who can outguess everything we intend to do?"

 "By using game theory," grinned Jonathan, "if Syblline can predict us perfectly, we use that against her. By precommitting to failsafes that are detrimental to GORGON. That's the reason NATO's Deadman Switches have been deployed around Ostland. GORGON knows exactly what we will and will not tolerate. We find stable Nash equilibria that we can exploit."

"Did you get all of that?" Griffin asked Megan.

"No, sir," Megan admitted, "not the last part."

"Me neither," Griffin shrugged, "Just keep in mind that if Patient Zero in Portsmouth starts eating his parents, GORGON will notice."

END OF CHAPTER