Page 81 of Hollow State

"The AI flagged a potential intruder. Fucking thing is so much faster than I am, and it caught a single digital drop. Thing is, the AI isn't sure of what it's looking for. The flag triggered internally, but its source was routed from the outside, so it's confused and angry."

"I don't think AI has emotions," Coulter said.

"It's certainly pissing me off," Gideon said. "The guards don't know if there's a person in the building or if somebody managed to hack into the system from the main building. They’ll be checking all major access points. That's my office, the lab, and from what I'm seeing here, that room Darwin found when he saw the team being ambushed."

"Can you give the AI something else to go after?" Coulter asked. "Or make it look like a false alarm?"

"I can do one better," Gideon said. "I can make it look like it's chasing its own loop, and it will eventually give up. Until then, everybody plan on a fight. But I'd like to keep it to the guards that are in that building and avoid the ones headed your way. That means I need to lock you in."

"We're twenty paces away," Neve’s voice boomed over the comms.

"Hurry it up," Gideon said.

Wynn squared her shoulders and pulled in a breath. She blinked, and the room snapped into focus. The dimmed hallway lights separated into individual filaments. The sound of Zadie's fingers on the keyboard was like twin toddlers pounding on a piano. Each keystroke had its own unique sound, blending into the next, creating some kind of wild masterpiece.

Wynn rested her finger on the trigger, her sights sat dead center on the door.

Whatever came through it, she had to be ready.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"I've never met anyone who types as loud as you do. Or as fast." Wynn rubbed her temple. The noise annoyed her. More like grated on her last nerve. It was so bad, she wanted to stomp over there and break Zadie's fingers.

Deep down, Wynn knew it wasn't the sound that bothered her. It was the situation. It was being at Hyperion. It was seeing windows and understanding they were still trapped. It was knowing her biometrics were fluctuating and she couldn't control or change the situation. She hated that feeling more than anything.

"I'm actually very light-fingered, considering," Zadie said.

"That's impossible." Wynn kept her focus on the dim lights beyond the frosted panel. "But you know what's weird. Every one of the keystrokes is oddly separate. And the code cascading down the middle screen is standing off the glass, like it's floating a half inch in front of it." She rolled her shoulder, and her muscle glided across her bone. "It's not all at once, either. Whatever I focus on lifts, and everything else goes soft. Then I look somewhere else and it swaps."

"That's weird. Like trippy weird," Zadie said. "Although, I kind of get it. I mean, I'm totally dialed in. Hyper-focused, hyper-aware, like I took somebody's Adderall, forgot I took it and decided to double dose. Everything's sharp, but it's all sharp at the same time. Nothing's floating anywhere."

"That's a good description of what I’d expect under the circumstances," Darwin's voice crackled over the comms. "Wynn, I want you to draw a quarter dose of KTH-1."

"Why?" She shifted her grip on the rifle. "Those guards won’t be gone long. Won't that affect my abilities if we come under fire?"

"It might take a little off the top. But it's not a full flush, so you'll still have most of the VKR-1 working." Darwin's voice remained even. "I don't like your numbers, and I like what you just described even less. I'm worried it's affecting your brain like a psychedelic, which I have seen before."

"Okay. I'll administer now." Wynn reached for the kit on her hip. Even though her mind screamed that he was wrong, and insisted this feeling she had was right, she understood the drug was lying. She trusted Darwin.

"I need all hands on deck," Scout's voice blasted in Wynn's ear.

"Neve and I are in the stairwell," Coulter whispered. "We're moving slow. Four guards are two flights above."

"The other four are about to circle back," Scout said. "Wynn, you're going to have to come out here, now."

"I'll have to do this injection after." She tucked the kit back in her bag and cracked open the door. "Are you about finished, Zadie?"

"Five minutes. Maybe six." Zadie didn't stop working. "These files have labels on them that Gideon had mentioned were important."

"Lock her in," Wynn said. "I'm stepping into the hallway, now."

"On it," Gideon said. "But I can only do so much to keep them out."

Wynn slipped into the corridor, pulled the door shut, and it clicked. She crossed to the alcove in four strides and put her shoulder against the wall beside Scout.

Scout pointed in the direction of the elevators, and several seconds later, a group of guards strolled down the center of the hallway. One had his cell up in front of his face, and the light from it made his chin and nose glow blue.

"I swear, I hate technology," he said. "This doesn't make sense. It flagged a physical breach in the office, only no doors were ever opened. Then it flagged a digital breach in the network, which makes sense. But if that’s the case, we should be calling Pope or even the big boss. We all know Finch is fucking paranoid."