Revolution: A Red Dog Thriller (The Altered Book 3) Read online

  Revolution

  Blou Bryant

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact the author at [email protected].

  Acknowledgments:

  Cover art and design by Sean Lowery

  Proofread and edited by Anna Albo.

  Copyright © 2016 Blou Bryant

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 1

  Emm reached to pull her sleeve up and check the time again, but Wyatt stopped her. “Don’t look nervous,” he said. There were seven minutes until the twins should be in position. Seven minutes and about twenty seconds. He avoided checking his own watch to confirm. He didn’t need to calculate or guess.

  She smiled devilishly and asked, “How long?”

  “Six minutes and fifty seconds.”

  “Are you sure?” She ribbed him with a broad grin. “Don’t ya wanna take a peek? Just a little one?”

  “I’m not checking either.”

  “Okay. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  Wyatt made a face at her. “Doesn’t bother me. How’re you doing without your jewelry?”

  She stuck out a studded tongue. “I still got a lot on me. Nothing jangly.”

  The donut shop was mostly empty, and the clerks behind the counter were busy talking. The only two other customers were young lovers whose eyes hadn’t left each other since they arrived. Wyatt glanced out the window at the compound across the road. “It looks quiet.”

  With a nod, Emm agreed. “I thought they’d increase security after our first break-ins.”

  “It’s a new company, perhaps they assumed they’re not a target.” He tried to sound hopeful, but he wasn’t. The three cars in the parking lot bothered him. At night, there were always three, but two tonight differed from the ones he’d seen on the surveillance videos. Change wasn’t good. Wyatt didn’t like change.

  “Well, that’s good for us.”

  “Perhaps,” said Wyatt. The site had been scouted for days by members of the Red Dogs, and nobody had noticed any increase in security. A few guards rotated on a set schedule and patrolled at exact times. One walked by, hardly looking left or right as he made his perfunctory rounds. Human security wasn’t necessary, but most facilities kept a few on anyway out of tradition, or for insurance, Wyatt didn’t know.

  When the guard had rounded the corner, Wyatt said, “It’s almost time. Are you ready?”

  “You got it, boss-man.”

  With a groan, he patted her on the arm. “I’m not the boss-man.”

  “Of course, you aren’t, boss-man. Give me the word when it’s time.”

  With an internal sigh, Wyatt counted the last moments down. At twenty-two seconds, he took a second bite from his old-fashioned plain and washed it down with coffee. At ten he gathered together his unfinished donut, drink, as well as her jelly donut wrapper, and empty large Coke.

  “On five,” he said, got up and dropped everything in the garbage. As he glanced back, she touched the electrical outlet on the table and closed her eyes. The restaurant went dark as he reached the entrance.

  Moments later he was in the parking lot, with Emm following close behind. She’d shorted out the entire block by sending a small virus from one of the chips embedded in her hand and through the wires. All cameras and lights outside the compound were now off. There would still be some internal power on a backup generator, but their approach wouldn’t be seen.

  Wyatt broke into a run once he cleared the parking lot and crossed the road half a block later. At the edge of the fence, he stopped, knelt and braced himself as Emm jumped onto his shoulders. He stood and thrust her quickly into the air to the top of the fence, just below the barbed wire. Three quick moves later, he had joined her, pulled his jacket off and draped it across the barbs. She clambered over and he followed.

  As he leapt to the ground, she whispered, “The twins are in place.”

  He grunted and took off at a sprint. They had only minutes until the guard came back and while it was almost pitch black, that didn’t mean they couldn’t be seen. Emm breathed heavy behind him as they reached the wall of the building. “Surveillance cut?” he asked.

  “The two I can see, yes.”

  Good, the twins had done their first job.

  He edged along the wall until he ran into a rope. They’d also done their second job. He motioned for Emm to climb ahead of him and when she was a few feet up, he followed behind. Once they reached the roof, he pulled the rope up behind him. Ari and Ira were waiting for them.

  “Hey,” he said and did a double take. Both were dressed in black outfits, like he’d told them. Skin-tight bodysuits and face paint wasn’t what he’d meant, however. “What the hell?”

  “The vent is in the center,” said Ira, ignoring him. Her dreadlocks bounced as she turned and ran to it.

  Ari gathered up the rope and ran after her sister. She’d compressed her unruly mass of hair under a black bandana. When he joined them over the vent they’d already removed, he whispered, “Guys, what were you thinking, face paint and…”

  “If we’re going to be ninja’s…” interrupted Ari.

  “… we need to dress the part,” finished Ira.

  “And if someone sees you?”

  “You think that…”

  “… it’s our makeup that’ll bother them?”

  “And not being on top of the building in the…”

  “… middle of the night…”

  “… with rope?”

  Wyatt sighed at their rapid-fire responses, and gave them a withering look that—he hoped—said he didn’t approve. Taking the backpack from Ari, he asked, “You got everything?”

  “Cameras down,” said Ira.

  “Internet and phones cut.”

  “Wireless blocker in place.”

  “Good work. Emm, follow me first, the twins watch our back. We have fifteen minutes to get in and out. Let’s do it.”

  Wyatt closed his eyes, counted to five, and lowered himself through the open vent into an air intake duct. Emm follow. Twenty feet later, he came to a fork and went left. Fifteen feet after that, he unscrewed another cover and lowered himself into a washroom. Perfect, exactly like on the building plan.

  As Emm dangled down, he lowered her t
o the ground. Ari and Ira ignored his offer and dropped to the floor, landing with theatrical poses. They were enjoying this a bit much for his liking. He’d talk to them about it, later.

  “Close it up?” asked Emm.

  “No need,” he said. Once they’d escaped, he didn’t care if anyone knew how they’d got in. By then, it’d be too late. He checked his watch, it was two-eleven. The guards were over six hours into their shift. He didn’t know where they patrolled, but knew their schedule from watching the front desk for days. At fifteen minutes to each hour, one always left the front for thirty minutes. Assuming time to return to their post, the hall should be empty.

  Cautious despite the precautions, he waited thirty seconds with his ear to the door. When there wasn’t any noise, he opened it a crack and looked out. The hallway was quiet. “Let’s go,” he said and followed the map he’d memorized.

  Down the long hall. Wait at another door, listen, look in. Into a large open room filled with cubicles, the lights were out, but the room was lit by the light of the screen savers on a hundred monitors in a hundred cubicles.

  “Quickly,” he whispered and hurried through the rows.

  “Weird,” said Ira.

  He stopped and bent down, a hand up to stop the group. “What did you see?”

  She put a hand on his back, “Nothing, keep going.”

  “What’s weird?” he asked. Any change, anything out of the ordinary, was a risk and a potential threat. He poked his head over the cubicle wall, looked left, right and ducked back down.

  Ari giggled lightly. “Tell him.”

  With a long sigh, Ira said, “Fine, the monitor there, to the left. There’s a Chihuahua riding the fattest cat I’ve ever seen. It’s weird.”

  Wyatt let his head drop briefly and cursed under his breath. “Focus, people.” He stood up again and moved through the room to the far door, which led to their target. Once they reached it, he tried the door. Locked, as expected. He nodded to Emm. “Do your thing.”

  She left her position in the rear, joined him, and put one hand on the control panel. “Oh, complex. Wait,” she said, her eyes closed. “Wait.”

  Wyatt counted out the seconds. Ten passed, then twenty. Emm wasn’t moving, rooted to the spot, her hand over the panel. “Can you do it?”

  She ignored him. The chips in her hand connected to others in her spine and her skull. Her brain and the chips worked in unison, the best of both worlds. Still, he’d seen this before. She shut down her other senses as her augmented brain explored electronic pathways.

  The sound of a door opening and closing on the other side of the room startled him. He ducked down. The twins’ broke left and right, scurrying down the aisle of cubicles, not waiting for his direction. They’d done this before.

  “Hey, you,” someone yelled out. Wyatt kept his back to the wall of the closest cubicle and made sure his head was below its top. Emm didn’t respond, lost in her electronic world.

  The sound of footsteps was briefly the only noise other than the whirling of the air conditioning and the hundred computers in the room. The steps were fast at first, and then slowed as they came closer. “What are you doing?” the man said. “Stop!”

  There was a faint shuffling, he was moving, but slow now, confused by Emm’s lack of response. From the sound, he was close, perhaps twenty feet. Wyatt waited. Now, perhaps, ten feet. He leaned forward, on the balls of his feet, waited three more seconds.

  When the sound paused again, he stood up and in one smooth motion vaulted the cubicle wall, his hands up and ready to fight. As he cleared the wall, he saw that he’d misjudged, the man was still at least twenty feet away. Damned acoustics. The twins were even further away, each with a chalikar out, ready to throw if needed. The thin metal disks could easily disable—or kill—the man from that distance.

  The man fumbled at the buttons on the cheap uniform jacket. As it flew open, a flash of black metal on his hip showed Wyatt what the man was going for. Not hesitating, he sprinted forward, covering ten feet before the guard had his hand on the gun. He was five feet closer when the weapon was out.

  Wyatt grabbed the gun when he reached his opponent, using his body movement to push it back. Wyatt ignored it as it fell and spun, using the force of his body to knock the guard to the ground. With one swift move, he stopped, turned, and punched down to the side of the jaw, rendering his opponent unconscious.

  With a curse, Wyatt checked for a radio, but didn’t find one. He’d assumed they would have had thirty minutes, but this changed things, the man would be missed. It might be in five or fifteen, but his absence would be noticed. The twins joined him and the three returned to Emm’s side.

  Wyatt considered poking her or—something, anything—to speed things up, but it would only slow her down. He contented himself with counting out the seconds and focused on his breath. In, hold, out, that was ten seconds. In, hold, out, another ten seconds.

  Finally, a painful minute and a half later, the door clicked and Emm opened her eyes. “You guys can’t imagine how tough that was.”

  With a wry grimace and a glance back at the body in the hall, Wyatt opened the door and stepped through. “Pull him in behind us,” he said to the twins. “And wait here.”

  “Him?” asked Emm, following Wyatt through the small antechamber.

  “Small hiccup. We gotta move fast. Did you get it all?”

  “Yeah, cameras are down and recordings wiped.”

  “Good,” Wyatt said as he looked around the room. It featured one computer on one otherwise empty desk, and a mural of the Earth from space covered the far wall. “This is wrong,” he said. The map he’d memorized had showed another room behind this one. Another room, with their targets in it.

  Emm stepped forward and gave a gentle push on the middle of North America. A faint hiss was accompanied by the opening of a previously hidden door. As it swung open, she curtsied with a friendly smirk and motioned him in. “Found this while hacking.”

  The blast of cold air that hit him as he entered told him that they were in the right place. The black, spartan décor and gleaming servers were the same in every single one of the seven places he’d broken into. Sometimes they were called control rooms, sometimes master servers, but they always looked the same. It was as if they all had the same twenty-year-old science fiction fan as a designer.

  There were four rows of servers with data ports and monitors sticking out at even intervals. Wyatt took the bag and pulled out four small black boxes. Seymour, a hacker who’d became a billionaire by founding an online dating service, had designed them. The direct connection was necessary to circumvent the many security systems. Once placed, they would upload code to place a virus directly in the main system firmware, and from there spread to the rest of the system.

  Wyatt threw two over to Emm and they split up.

  Each row was a little over his height and had four shelves, each with twenty-two servers. Three-hundred and fifty-two in total, he quickly calculated as he checked the first boxes by placing a small drive over them. It was programmed to light up when over the right machines.

  “Got one,” said Emm. Through the shelves, he saw her place the first beta-box on top. A small light turned red on it. It would go green once the upload was complete.

  He continued and found his first on the second shelf. He put one of his own boxes on top, activating the upload. As he waited, he counted. Four seconds checking each box, eighteen seconds to place each of five boxes. If Emm moved as fast as he did, and they each had to cover one-hundred-seventy-six machines and place two… they’d finish in fifteen minutes and out of the building in twenty.

  “One done,” said Emm, moving on.

  Wyatt tapped out the seconds. A faint green light indicated that the upload was complete. He placed the used beta-box back in the bag and continued.

  He was so intent on moving along the row that he jumped at the sound of an unexpected voice.

  “Hello?”

  Wyatt crouched and turn
ed towards the door, fists up, and ready to attack whoever had entered. The door was secure.

  “Hello?” The voice was raspy, female and sounded… confused.

  He looked left and right, he was alone with Emm, who had also crouched down.

  “Why is it so dark?”

  Emm opened her mouth and shut it again at a quick gesture from Wyatt.

  “Hello?”

  After thirty seconds of quiet had passed, Wyatt motioned to Emm and started checking servers again. Someone knew they were there but time was short, they had to keep going.

  “What are you doing?” the woman asked when he put the next beta-box in place. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

  “What the hell?” asked Emm. Wyatt motioned to keep her mouth shut, but she simply shrugged.

  “Hello!” said the disembodied voice. “Do you know why it’s dark?”

  Emm kept working, but responded, “What do you mean, it’s dark?”

  “I can’t see anything. Everything went away seven minutes and thirty-two seconds ago.”

  “Oh, no,” said Emm.

  Wyatt was at the third shelf, paused, and mouthed ‘What?’ to her.

  She shook her head in reply, and asked the voice, “What do you normally see?”

  The monitors flashed to life with images of the room they were in. Most were only the empty room itself, but a few had people working at the terminals. None showed Wyatt or Emm.

  “It’s the machine,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Can you make it light again?”

  “The voice, it’s the machine itself.”

  “I don’t like the dark,” the voice said.

  “Quiet,” said Wyatt to Emm and continued with his work. This was weird, too weird, but they couldn’t leave now.

  Emm placed her last beta-box and shook her head at him. While she might think of him as the boss-man, she was, like all the Red Dogs, independent to the last. She said, “Don’t worry, girl, it’ll be light soon.”

  “I want it to be light now. I’m scared.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.”

  “Can you make it light?”

  “Can you remember the light?”