Page 56 of The Lazarus Protocol

She shifted in her chair to look at him. “That there’s some kind of manifesto floating around about a global network. That’s probably what she was talking about.”

Yeah, there was definitely more to that. But she didn’t elaborate.

“Huh.” Dan sat back in his chair. “Got a sec, Nix?”

Adam nodded.

“Johannsen is totally off the grid,” Dan said. “Hasn’t shown up to work, hasn’t used his credit cards. His phone isn’t pinging off any cell towers. He’s completely disappeared, and he’s not responding on any of the channels we’ve used to talk to him.”

Ash glanced at Adam.

Steph caught it but didn’t say anything.

Adam needed more coffee. “Where’s Jay? Can he reroute and go check it out?”

Dan nodded. “I’ll hit him up. See where he is. We could use some boots on the ground. Johannsen might’ve been kidnapped.”

Steph muttered, “That seems to be happening a lot lately.”

“How are you doing?” Adam took a bite, watching her reaction.

“Does it matter? If someone you know is missing, we could go check it out. Especially if it’s related.” She straightened the silverware on her plate. “She probably took him, like she took Doctor Warrington.” She looked like she was about to say more but caught herself.

Information about a Dr. Sebastian Warrington popped up on the screen, courtesy of Ice.

“I was looking for him when I was taken,” she said. “Warrington works for a subsidiary that has government contracts. I don’t totally understand the intricacies of what he does, but it equates to AI talking to other AI and how they communicate without one absorbing the other or one finding dominance. It all has to happen on this dedicated server that’s like a meeting space for programs like that.”

“Says here that Warrington hasn’t been seen in weeks.” Ice scanned the screen of his laptop. “But his wife and kids are fine at home. No press conferences or calls for him to be returned, though.” He frowned.

Adam told Dan, “Contact Marina. Find out if what we downloaded from the server farm had anything like that on it. The program has to be tied to a physical server, and if it is, that could give us a location to go check out.”

Dan nodded. “Jay is rerouting from Frankfurt to check out Johannsen’s apartment.”

“If this Johannsen is missing, and Vesper is involved, then he’s in serious danger.” Steph paused. “Warrington has probably been buried somewhere no one will ever find him.”

“I’m not going to believe that’s what happened to Johannsen until I’ve exhausted all the other options.” Adam needed her to know that.

“He’s your contact at Earthnet?”

Adam nodded. “That’s right.”

She wandered over to the LED wall to look closer at the articles about Vesper, and the ones to the left of the screen about Warrington.

Adam let her have a moment to herself. Ash glanced at him, a question on his face. Adam shook his head because the answer was no and he didn’t want to talk openly about it. “What about the rocket launch? What do we know about that?”

Kai said, “Apart from the fact it was so awesome it nearly killed us?” He snorted. “Nothing official in the media online about a launch in that area, so Earthnet is keeping it pretty quiet. Only some local footage of people who were surprised to find their windows suddenly shaking. But that was a couple of miles away.”

“Any idea what was special about the drone?” Adam took his coffee to look over Kai’s shoulder.

At the desk perpendicular to Kai’s, Ash studied the screen of his laptop. “Without looking at it, we can’t know, but the design wasn’t like anything I’ve seen before. There’s nothing like it online. It was compact. Streamlined.”

“It traveled pretty far.”

Ash nodded. “Maybe it has greater range, and a more powerful engine. That would be worth a lot if someone figured out how it works, getting the motor in such a small space. I’d be interested to know what it runs on.”

“It was solar, bro.”

Adam patted Kai’s shoulder. “You saw that?”