Chapter Sixteen

Eva and Rosa’s Mercetta pulled into the Halikkon facility’s garage and stopped. The pair swiftly made their way into the building.

The couple kept a straight morning face that displayed their concerned, effective professionalism.

They were still considered the most capable couple leading TITAN, ‘Earth’s Scientific Redeemers’, as one of the science news blogs had labeled them in the past. But inside the room, it was all Edmund.

Some had doubted his participation in Team Halikkon, other than dishing orders and claiming the victory of others on the team, since he had never really contributed much. However, that statement only rang true if you excluded his political ties and influence there.

The soothing sun greeted them, and even though it had been years, it still reminded them of the endless hours they had spent working on the project.

Seven trials after thousands of simulations, but something always seemed to cause them all to fall short until the last successful one—Project TITAN.

The AI immediately welcomed them as the transparent door opened.

“Thank you, Ti,” Rosa answered the AI. He was one of those who had advocated that they treat the systems like humans, with respect, but many had ridiculed this idea.

Detractors had argued that computers obviously had no emotions or feelings. Even though AI had some capacity to process for themselves, they were nothing like the biological rhythms of humankind and would always have their limitations.

That had not stopped Rosa from continually acknowledging them.

Husband and wife made their way via the elevator to the top floor, greeted by the coated glass door.

The door slid open, and Edmund’s usual grim nature resurfaced, with Aura, Zho, and James already seated at the conference room table, tied up momentarily with another video call.

“About time, Rosa.”

The two men exchanged handshakes, and Edmund turned to Eva, giving her a bright smile, followed by a soft hug.

“What is the big emergency, if there is one?” she asked as the three began walking down the hallway.

“For the past two hours, we have observed abnormal readings on the city LoRaWAN network. Some of the packets are even making it to our facility perimeter, bouncing against our firewall,” he said, his legs moving just as fast as his mouth as they walked.

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“Have you found anything?”

“We are certain the source is a group of hackers; we are trying to trap an array code-branch to see if we can correlate the ID and source. But it is most certainly someth…”

Darkness.

Total blackout and an uneasy silence.

There was an emptiness where there was usually the throng of meticulously busy sounds of technology in the background. Only the semi-illuminated, shocked faces of those who happened to have their phones in hand were visible.

“What happened?” Rosa asked as the entire facility’s lights went out. Backup power immediately snapped online to provide auxiliary emergency power to critical systems.

“Working on it,” Zho responded almost too quickly.

“What the hell is going on?” Edmund finally said, instinctively reaching for his phone and putting the torch on.

“Something has hit our entire city grid. Fortunately, our servers are still operational. Someone must be trying to hack our very own systems right now!”

All the facility access doors went into secure Sec-11 lockdown. The only thing opening the doors now would be emergency protocol key fobs in case of fire or some other internal danger.

Aura turned away and silently looked to her phone to see if there was any message from her new secret friends, but there was nothing.

“Can someone explain what the hell just happened? My key fob isn’t working!” Edmund exclaimed.

Surprise took Team Halikkon in such a devastating way that they could have never imagined. It was not possible for the power in the entire city to go off, even more so, impossible for anything to happen right in their own lab facility without the AI giving them a warning—but no alarm sounded.

Nothing.

Aura touched her screen again, but nothing came up. What the…? What are they up to? she thought.

The secondary generator finally kicked in, allowing the dim red rays to give them just enough light to see where they stood. Three screens came online, but no systems or computers were operational.

“Ti did not even give us a heads up. How is that?”

Zho pulled her phone, pressed some keys, then spoke into the phone.

“Portal, initialize. Analyze the situation.”

“Excuse me?” Edmund said. “Do you have an external AI connection to the Collective? As you understand, that’s illegal.”

Zho turned to Edmund, clearly exposing the disguise on her face.

“What? Is it illegal? It’s a small AI to help manage some personal issues.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not against the law. We expect all AI to be connected to the main servers to prevent… you know.”

“So, you are going to turn me in now? I can stop anytime you’d like.”

Edmund remained quiet, pressing his lips together. Even he knew better than to push the limits now, with everything that was unfolding.

“The mainframe Collective is down. They have shut all connected computers, or I am afraid, they have been hacked by an external source,” Portal informed.

Zho asked, “Can you counter-hack the insertion?”

Portal began processing, and after a minute, the voice came up again.

“I cannot track the source; they have carefully hidden their trace alongside their link. Here is an output packet breadcrumb I have located: ARH_G/0\SYS, that is all that I have.”

Zho tilted her head with a perplexed look on her face. “What the hell is that?”

“Portal, is there a way to restore the power? The servers? Heat? Or anything?” Aura asked in a panicked tone.

“There are no auxiliary links, by design, to prevent unauthorized intrusion. I will need to be connected into the mainframe Collective, direct Jport,” Portal responded.

“To get to the Collective, we have to make it out of here first,” Aura said.

“I think I can rewire the door, overriding it to open,” James said as he withdrew his case from under the table.

Edmund remained quiet. He hoped James could genuinely get them out and to the central servers; otherwise, they all must sit and wait until help came.

If help came at all.