Page 8 of The Lazarus Protocol

“Us, too.” Ash sounded irritated. “But we got in the server room first.”

“Guess we’ll see who makes it back to the fence first.” Dan almost sounded amused.

“Hurry up.” That was Kai.

Ash replied, “I can’t make it go faster.”

Adam smiled to himself, watching the green text quit scrolling. A bar of green swept left to right across the bottom of the screen, then Download complete showed up. He disconnected the cable and pocketed it, motioning with hand signals for Dan to go ahead of him.

The big man—wider, not taller, than Adam—headed to the door, checked the hall, and then signaled to Adam it was clear.

“Phoenix, this is Overwatch. Come back.” Marina sounded concerned.

Enough that Dan froze before going out the door.

Adam relaxed his stance. “Go ahead, Overwatch.”

“You know how the client said that, while testing their security system for weak spots, we shouldn’t take the two downloads from the two intentionally un-networked server rooms and combine them, and that we definitely shouldn’t look at the files?”

“Are you gonna say ‘whoops’ next?”

“I don’t use that word,” Marina said, “because I don’t make mistakes.”

“So what happened?”

“The two programs saw each other and connected on their own accord. As if they’re programmed to do so.”

“Can you stop it?”

“Negative,” she said. “The problem is, this program doesn’t belong to the company that hired us. This is a Starwise Holdings program.”

“And we were hired by Earthnet Unlimited.” Adam frowned. “They’re not connected, or subsidiaries?” That would be the most reasonable explanation, right? “Maybe it only looks like they’re different companies, but they aren’t.”

Dan turned back to him. “Why don’t we go find someone who works here and ask?”

Adam said, “Overwatch, have you been updating our contact at Earthnet on our progress?”

“Not yet. I’m waiting until you guys clear the fence on your way out.”

“If you can’t separate them again⁠—”

“I can’t.”

“Then put the entire program on a separate drive that won’t connect to anything else. Keep an eye on it.” Adam motioned to Dan to proceed. “We’ll do some more looking around.”

“Man.” Kai dragged the word out. “I wanted to be the first one back to the fence.”

“Be my guest,” Dan said in response.

Over comms Kai said, “While you go sneaking around the building? Ash and I need to hang back, in case you need help.”

Dan snorted, making his way down the hall. “We won’t.”

Adam smiled to himself. “Everything good, Overwatch?”

“I’m dealing with it. This thing is…robust. And it’s growing as it knits the two programs together.”

“Is it AI?”