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  Zelda . . . Really?

  Legend resisted the urge to sigh and simply said, “Yes, sir, General. I’m your guy. What can 231 do for you?”

  “I’m not one for bullshitting, and I don’t have time for big words and long sentences, Major, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. One of our patrols found an unknown piece of tech in a cave in the Tora Bora mountains, and I have no friggin’ idea what it is or what to do with it. So far, three people have interacted with this thing, two of my soldiers and one crow—excuse me; I mean Taliban detainee. Since that first interaction, none of them have been right in the head.”

  He did a double take in his mind. What in the world was Kane talking about? An unknown piece of tech in a cave? He hadn’t heard anything about this . . .

  After a breath, Kane continued, “So I packed everything and everyone in the belly of a C-17, and I’m sending it to Andrews. You’ll need to put together a welcome party. I recommend hazmat, EOD, medical, and an interrogation team. And it wouldn’t hurt to have your counterpart from DARPA there as well. Make sure you cover all your bases, Major.”

  “If I didn’t know better, General, it almost sounds like you’re saying this object your men found is not from the neighborhood . . . if you know what I mean.”

  “Major, I don’t know what the hell this thing is. That’s why I’m sending it to you. What I can tell you is it didn’t come from Best Buy. So keep it secret. Keep it secure.”

  “Okay” was all Legend could muster, despite the fact that his mind was flooded with hundreds of questions.

  “Do you have any contacts at USAMRIID?”

  “A few.”

  “Good, you might have a couple of blue suits on-site just in case.”

  His heart skipped a beat. “Sir, are you implying that the object you’re sending me is a biohazard?”

  “I have no friggin’ idea, Major. The only test I was able to conduct here is a radiation survey. It’s not radioactive. Other than that, I don’t know what the object is, where it came from, or what it does. If I was in your position, I’d take precautions.”

  “Sir, if I might propose an alternative solution for consideration. What if you retain the object there in a secure holding facility and let me come to you? Give me twelve hours to put together a team, and we’ll be on the first flight out tonight to Bagram.”

  “Too late. The bird is already in the air,” Kane said. “I’m not equipped to deal with something like this. And to be honest, I don’t want to. You’ll have my report within the hour and details on the transport schedule. If you have any questions, don’t bother calling me. I’ve told you everything I know . . . Oh, and as of fifteen minutes ago, the event is code-word classified: BRIGHTWORK.”

  “Roger that.”

  “You ever play hot potato, Major?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you’re playing now. Try not to get burned. Kane out.”

  The line went dead. Staring at the receiver in his hand, Legend mumbled, “What the fuck just happened?” He turned to his computer, looking for any preliminary files that might have been transmitted to the secure server, but there was nothing from Kane. He ran a query for BRIGHTWORK and skimmed the results, looking for something fresh, but he didn’t see anything relevant so far.

  I should have asked him when the plane was scheduled to land. Shit . . .

  Then, as if Kane could hear his thoughts, a message came in addressed to him with a flight plan for a C-17 flying from Bagram to Andrews with aerial refueling en route. Looked like he had less than twelve hours to get his house in order. He picked a pen up off his desk, pulled a pad of paper from the drawer, and started on his list of team members for the welcome party. When the list was finished, he started making calls. Brigadier General Kane had counseled him to “Keep it secret. Keep it secure,” which by default meant keep it small. These were people he could trust.

  When there were only two calls left to make, he glanced down at the list. He’d already decided to save the most challenging call for last. Before making that call, he needed to talk to his sometimes sidekick but always ally at DARPA. He dialed the number from memory.

  “Cyril Singleton,” said the female voice on the line.

  “Cyril, this is Major Tyree at the Pentagon. What’s cooking? What’s shaking?”

  “Whenever you ask me that, Legend, it either means you need something from me or you’re about to drag me on a wild goose chase across another continent,” she said in a proper British accent that would make Mary Poppins proud. “So which is it today?”

  “The former.” He laughed. “I’d like to borrow Malcolm Madden for a special project.”

  As the lead scientist in DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program, Madden was helping develop the world’s most advanced neuromorphic machine technology. His charge was to build a cognitive computer—a machine intelligence with the plasticity and flexibility of a mammalian brain and the speed and precision of a computer. The hardware he was developing mimicked the architecture and scalability of a biological brain—utilizing a synaptic-based structure with broad interconnectivity. On top of that, Malcolm Madden also happened to have the highest IQ of anyone working in the defense industrial complex. The man was, literally, the smartest person Legend had ever met.

  “How long will you need him?” she asked. “The SyNAPSE team leans heavily on him. Things are busy, Legend. AI is the next battlefield frontier, and I’m getting a lot of pressure to transition lab projects into deployable prototypes.”

  “I know” was all he said, letting the pause afterward do the negotiating for him.

  “How long?” she asked with a sigh.

  “Hard to say. It could only be a day or two, or it could be a couple of weeks. Depends on what we find.”

  “What is the nature of the project?”

  “Classified TS/SCI,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, perking up at this. Apparently there was nothing like a good top-secret/sensitive-compartmented-information mystery to break the monotony of everyday Beltway minutiae. “But only under one condition: you read me in. I like to be apprised of what Malcolm is working on. He has a tendency to lose himself in either the weeds or the clouds. I can usually help keep him on altitude.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Legend said.

  “When do you need him?”

  “Today, actually. It’s a short-fuse deal, and I need to get chess pieces into place as soon as possible.”

  “In that case, I need you to pick him up from the airport. I was going to do it myself, but now that you’re seeking temporary custody of Mr. Madden, you can assume the responsibility of saving him from himself.”

  He chuckled. “Explain, please.”

  “Malcolm is returning from holiday in Brazil, but what constitutes holiday for Malcolm and holiday for the rest of us mortals have little in common. Last time he left the country, they caught him trying to smuggle parasitic wasp larvae from the Costa Rican jungle back into the US; they detained him, confiscated his samples, and slapped him with a thousand-dollar fine.”

  “All right,” he said, a devious smile curling his lips. “This could be fun.”

  “Anything else DARPA can do for you, Major?”

  “Actually,” he said mildly, “I was hoping I could use Westfield D as the evaluation facility.”

  The line went silent.

  Westfield D was the insider’s name for Westfield Dynamics—DARPA’s miniature equivalent of Area 51, a proving ground for DARPA’s top-secret projects. However, unlike Area 51, Westfield D was neither a military base nor located in the desert. The facility was nestled in the Virginia countryside, a short hop by car from the Culpeper Regional Airport. Seventy-five percent of the testing complex was located underground; the aboveground buildings consisted of two warehouses and the electrical controls–manufacturing shop. Westfield Dynamics was a real company, purchased and expertly operated as a for-profit front company for
DARPA.

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  “I’m still here,” she said. “You know I’ll have to run this up the chain.”

  “I know, but I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Oh really. You mean like the time you got us arrested in Berlin? Or how about the time you got us lost in Taiwan and we ended up at the wrong facility and almost got shot by security . . . that sort of worth your while?” she teased.

  “No, not like that.” He laughed. “More like I’m in tight with the Colonel at Camp Darby in Italy. How about on our next trip I make sure your flight home goes through Florence? How does five days on the Italian Riviera sound to you?”

  “I do like Northern Italian cuisine. Consider me officially persuaded.”

  “Thanks, Cyril. I owe you one.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said, and he could hear her smiling. “And don’t think I’m going to let you off the hook on the Italy trip.”

  “Never in a million years.”

  He ended the call, took a deep breath, and then dialed the final number on his list.

  Major Beth Fischer, USAMRIID’s Director of Biosecurity, picked up her secure line on the second ring. “Hey, Zelda,” she said, and he could literally hear the smirk on her face.

  He rolled his eyes. Et tu, Brute?

  “Hi, Beth. How are things at the slammer?” he asked, referring to USAMRIID’s infamous BioSafety Level 4 Medical Containment Suite, designed to handle persons who had been exposed to or infected with the world’s most deadly pathogens.

  “We don’t call it that anymore,” she said, “and things here are fine. I haven’t heard from you in a while.” Woman-speak for “You’re a shit for not calling me.” “How are things at the Puzzle Palace? Discover any new gizmos lately?”

  “Um, maybe. That’s the reason for my call . . . I mean, one of the reasons for my call. I wanted to talk to you too, of course.”

  “Mmm-hmm” was all that came back.

  He cringed at his fumble and went for broke. “Maybe we can grab lunch and I can fill you in?”

  “Today?”

  “Yeah.”

  She chortled at this. “Maybe if you had booked it with me three months ago. I’m looking at my calendar right now, and I don’t see any white space I can squeeze you into for weeks.”

  Now she was just toying with him. He probably deserved it. Actually, no, he didn’t deserve it. Romance in the twenty-first century was supposed to be egalitarian. She had just as much responsibility to call him as vice versa.

  “I’m serious, Beth. I’ve got a shipment coming in, and I’ve been advised by the sender I need to have a biosafety team standing by when it arrives.”

  “What are you talking about, Legend?” she said, suddenly all business.

  “I’m saying I need a couple of blue suits to meet me at the tarmac at Andrews Joint Base in fifteen hours to inspect and test this package.”

  “Okay, first of all, importing a biosafety hazard is not something you simply spring on a girl, especially when that girl happens to be the Army’s head of biosecurity. Second, one does not simply requisition ‘blue suits,’ as you say. If there is a shipment inbound containing an infectious pathogen, I need to know all the details, and I needed that information yesterday to make all the necessary arrangements—containment, transport, testing, storage, etcetera.”

  “I’m just trying to cover all my bases here. Besides, I know you. Don’t tell me you don’t have emergency-crisis-management and field-response teams you can stand up at a moment’s notice. If you want to send a team, you can send a team.”

  She sighed. “Biosafety is serious business, Legend. It’s not a game. There are protocols I have to follow.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, all the humor gone from his voice now too. “You’re right, but please understand, I’m in the same boat as you. This thing was literally dumped in my lap five minutes ago. It’s already in the air, Beth, and they’ve made me responsible for it. My ass is on the line here; all I’m asking for is a little help.”

  “And by roping me into your pop-up circus, you’re putting my ass on the line too.”

  An awkward silence hung on the line as he tried out multiple next sentences in his head and rejected each in turn.

  She broke first. “Are you going to tell me what’s in the shipment or not?”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “How can you not know what it is? You’re responsible for it.”

  “Meet me for lunch and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “It’s TS/SCI. I’d rather talk face-to-face.”

  “Fantastic, we’ll have to eat at a shitty restaurant where nobody else wants to go.”

  “Please.”

  “Fine.”

  “How about that one shitty place we used to like to go?”

  “TGI Fridays?”

  “No, the sushi place.”

  “Old Dominion isn’t shitty, Legend.”

  “I know, but if I ask for a table in the back we can whisper.”

  “Fine. Let’s meet late; I have a ton of work. How about 1300?”

  “That works for me. See you then.”

  He hung up the phone and felt a little surge of excitement and anticipation. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t called her since their last hookup. It wasn’t because he hadn’t wanted to see her; the reason was pedestrian, in all honesty. He had gotten busy, and too much time had gone by. Then calling had felt obligatory and awkward. Girls aren’t turned on by obligatory and awkward, so he hadn’t called.

  What the hell am I doing? Now is not the time for worrying about relationship bullshit.

  He pushed his chair back from his desk and walked over to the small closet in his office. He opened the door and pulled out one of three suits he kept. The gray one, he decided. For today’s meetings, he would eschew his Army uniform. Working and traveling in civilian clothes went hand-in-hand with working for 231. Outside the Pentagon, 80 percent of the people he dealt with on a daily basis were either civilians or nonmilitary government employees. Or spies. One must never forget about the spies.

  After a quick change, he headed out the door for Dulles to pick up Malcolm Madden.

  The Legend of Zelda was on the move . . . Where this strange new adventure was about to take him, he had no idea, but there was a spark in his step now. A spark that wasn’t there when he had walked into the Puzzle Palace this morning.

  CHAPTER 6

  Washington, Dulles International Airport

  Malcolm Madden fidgeted in line.

  He couldn’t help himself. He was nervous.

  Do you have any meats, fruits, vegetables, plants, seeds, soil, animals, or animal products to declare? That was what the customs form had said. He had checked the little box labeled “no,” but this was a lie. He did have items to declare, specifically Camponotus rufipes infected with Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis. Collecting samples of the Brazilian carpenter ant and the parasitic fungus named after its host species had been the purpose of his two-week vacation to the Amazonian jungle. While most people selected their vacation destinations in search of exotic cuisine, inspiring art and architecture, and the opportunity to visit famous cultural-heritage sites, Malcolm Madden used his vacations to find and collect mind-controlling parasitic organisms.

  Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis, popularly referred to as the zombie-ant fungus, was generating considerable buzz in entomological circles. What made this particular parasitic fungus so intriguing was that, despite not having a nervous system itself, it was somehow capable of manipulating an ant brain. Once infected with fungal spores, an unwitting ant quickly became a slave to Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis. The fungus infiltrated its host’s brain and then actively modified the ant’s behavior to facilitate its own reproductive life cycle. Instead of behaving like a normal ant, an infected ant would climb into the understory canopy, clamp its jaws to the bottom of a leaf, and
wait to die. After death, a fungal stalk grew from the head of the ant cadaver, spewing fresh infectious spores toward the forest floor below to infect other foraging ants and start the cycle anew. The fungus’s adaption was altogether remarkable, and for an ant, the stuff of nightmares.

  Malcolm was not an entomologist; he was not even a biologist. He was a cognitive neuroscientist and artificial intelligence subject-matter expert at DARPA. The experiment he intended to perform on the ants—euthanize them at different stages of the infection to observe the precise mechanism of neural infiltration and control—was neither funded nor directed by DARPA. It was one of his many little pet projects. His boss at DARPA was smart. Not smart in the same ways that he was smart, but rather in the ways of human motivation and productivity. She understood that people like Malcolm were not assembly-line workers. That a mind like his didn’t think and work linearly or sequentially all the time. Creative abrasion, idea cross-pollination, chance capture, disruptive collaboration, epiphany mutation—these were terms that Cyril Singleton liked to use, some of which he was certain she’d coined herself. She was the best boss he’d ever had, and he loved her for it.

  He loved her for everything else that she was too.

  “Next,” the customs agent said at the window ahead.

  There were two people in front of him in line. Malcolm felt his forehead break out in a sweat. He cursed silently. He was a terrible liar—always had been. Ever since he was little, he’d been a rule follower. Except for when the rules were unjust. Even the meek should not have to tolerate injustice. Especially the meek, he told himself. There were certain rules no person should be made to follow. As he matured and the complex intercourse and contradictions of governance, religion, and economics became self-evident to him, he constantly revised his moral code to suit. Morality is nuance. Very few people understood this.