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“Heads up!” Rick leaned over the edge of the roof and let the coil of cable drop while keeping a tight grip on one end. It hit the ground with a gentle smack before Oles scooped it up and hurried over to the police car. Rick watched as Dr. Evans and Oles connected the cable to the system sitting atop the hood of the police car. Once Dr. Evans raised his good arm with a thumbs-up gesture, Rick took the end of the cable he was still holding and turned his attention to the array of antennas mounted next to him.
From atop the roof he could once again see a large portion of the city laid out below, but unlike the previous time he had been up on top of the building he had not a second to spare. After securing the cable to a nearby support pole with a length of rope he clambered around amongst the antennas, looking for the best way to connect the cable to the multi-spectrum transmitter.
Around the size of a shoebox, the LKN Series VI had a protective panel on the side that Rick removed to expose a small touchscreen control panel next to several data ports. Rick removed the three cables already plugged into the device and attached the new cable before leaning back over the edge of the roof.
“Good to go!” Rick shouted down at Oles and Dr. Evans. They both waved at him and Dr. Evans slid behind the driver’s seat of the car and started up the engine. Oles then connected the power strip to the power inverter and turned on the server and monitor. Rick turned back and watched the transmitter’s control panel, and after a few seconds his patience was rewarded. The screen flickered to life, displaying the LKN company logo and Rick pressed down on two of the buttons next to the screen. A moment later a debug boot screen appeared and Rick rubbed his hands together to try and get rid of some of the chill.
“We’re in business,” he whispered to himself as he read over the information displayed on the screen. It had been a few years since he had put his hands on an LKN transmitter, but the interface was a lightweight Unix/Linux variant, something he was intimately familiar with. Before proceeding to a full b
ootup of the transmitter, Rick tapped out a few commands and popped open another access panel on the other side of the device. He manually pulled out three connectors and checked the panel again, satisfied to see a message saying “Receiver Offline. Check Connections.”
With the receiver’s wiring pulled, the device was physically incapable of receiving incoming transmissions, including those from any potentially infected systems. Rick tapped out a few more commands and the device continued its normal bootup sequence. When the device finally finished turning on, Rick began tapping through menus, examining each one for signs that Damocles had infected the system. While early infections were nearly impossible to detect, Damocles had moved far beyond the stage of being subtle, and infections were pronounced and obvious.
“Rick!” A shout drifted up and he leaned over the side to see Dr. Evans with a hand cupped around the side of his mouth. “How’s it look?”
Rick glanced back at the screen and raised a thumb in the air at Dr. Evans before returning to the transmitter. He powered it off, replaced the pulled connections and powered it back on into debug mode. With the device fully operational again, Rick stood up and waved to Dr. Evans and Oles. “I’m coming down!”
A few moments later, the trio stood clustered around the monitor sitting atop the police car. With Oles and Dr. Evans injured, Rick had taken the lead on the keyboard, though he was merely entering in commands that were being given to him by the other two. Twenty minutes into a session digging deep into the transmitter’s core system files, though, Rick had finally had enough.
“All right, that’s it,” Rick snapped as he exited from the low-level files. Oles and Dr. Evans glanced at each other before Oles spoke.
“What do you mean? We need to check all the files, to ensure that it’s not—”
“It’s not. Okay? It’s not infected. I checked it, we’ve been in the system for a while now and nothing’s popped up. If Damocles had a tendril in here it would have infected the server and we’d know for sure.”
“We can’t be sure, Rick, unti—”
“Doc.” Rick turned and glared at Dr. Evans with a stare that unquestionably communicated what he was feeling. “We’ve got more pressing concerns, like finding out exactly how much time’s left before Damocles starts its final stage and starting the distribution of the shutdown commands. How about we get those all keyed in and hey, even if Damocles is on the system it’ll read the shutdown command and it’ll be gone anyway.”
Dr. Evans raised a finger to argue, but what Rick said suddenly clicked with him and he and Oles exchanged a sheepish look. “I… uh… yes. That would work, I suppose.”
“We didn’t think of that,” mumbled Oles.
“Well, that’s why I’m here.” Rick ground his teeth together as he forced a smile and pulled out the thumb drive he had taken earlier. “Now walk me through how to get these commands written up.”
“Of course.” Dr. Evans began to instruct Rick in what to do, and a few minutes into the process Rick stopped and looked at the pair with a quizzical expression.
“You’re having me enter all this into a text file.”
“…yes?” Dr. Evans appeared confused, as though the question was completely alien to him.
Rick rubbed his eyes, trying to keep from saying anything that might be taken the wrong way. “Dr. Evans… can you explain how this will work? Don’t we have to use a specific piece of software to interface with Damocles and issue commands to it?”
“What? No, of course not. The commands can be embedded into any type of file, so long as the authentication key properly surrounds them. Damocles will read the key and commands and act accordingly.”
“That… okay, that’s surprisingly smart,” Rick nodded slowly as he thought about what Dr. Evans was describing. “It ensures that you can always communicate with Damocles no matter what system it’s on or where it is. I assume it’ll read the authentication key in multiple formats?”
“Of course.”
“Huh.” Rick raised his eyebrows approvingly. “Well, all right. That’s pretty clever.” He continued working away, taking instructions from Dr. Evans and Oles. The command’s formatting was complex, but the results would be simple enough. Once read and digested by Damocles, it ordered the program to first broadcast the commands to every other instance of Damocles that it could connect to. The second instruction was for Damocles to stand down from any and all system attacks and then delete itself from the device it was on. This self-replicating chain would act precisely like Damocles did when it spread outward, except the spread this time would be a cure, not the disease.
When he finished, he saved the command file to both the system and to the thumb drive before popping the drive out and slipping it into his pocket. He was about to ask the other two what the next step was when the sound of scraping footsteps off to the side followed by the harsh staccato crack of gunshots caught everyone off-guard. Rick turned to look at the building where Jane had lost her life and saw, bloodied and staggering, an impossible sight. Jacob stumbled out of the entrance, his pistol in hand as he howled in pain and rage.
“Stop what you’re doing and give me the codes!”
Chapter 13
The Waters’ Homestead
