The Extinction Trials(20)

“We’ve opened our envelopes,” Maya said. “They all had personal items in them that didn’t seem to offer any help to our current situation. It was the same for the man you just performed the autopsy on.”

Owen picked up the envelope with his name on it and gently tore it open. “Well, let’s see what ARC saw fit to leave for me.”

He peered inside and was surprised at what he saw. “Mine has personal items too,” he said quietly.

Cara had opened her envelope and was reaching inside. “There’s just one item in mine.” She held up a twisted piece of metal.

“I don’t get it,” Alister said.

“It’s a personal item too,” Cara said. “And I’m very, very surprised to see it. With that said, I don’t think it’s going to be much help to us.” She shifted her gaze to the ARC tablet that was lying next to one of the boxes. “But I assume that is?”

“It could be,” Will said.

“Could be?” Cara asked.

“If I could log in,” Will said. “I’ve tried using my credentials, which have Level 3 access to all ARC security systems, but it won’t recognize me.”

Owen considered that for a moment. “Maybe your account was deleted. Bryce said that it’s been a very long time since The Change and the fall of the world.”

“It’s possible my account was deactivated, that’s true. But knowing what I know about ARC, it’s impossible that the account was deleted.”

“Why do you say that?” Owen asked, intrigued.

“I guess I should give you a little bit of company history,” Will said, drawing the attention of all the others.

“ARC stands for Archival Records Corporation. The company’s original mission was to see that no record was ever lost again. The company’s founder was Victor Levy. The cause was personal to him. When he was young, he and his brother were orphans. Victor was adopted by a family, but they refused to adopt his brother, who was soon after adopted by another family. They moved away and the brothers lost touch. As an adult, Victor tried to find his younger brother, but the records of who had adopted the boy had been lost over time. He died not ever knowing his brother. His goal with ARC was to see that something like that never happened to anyone ever again. ARC’s original business was storing paper records. Mostly medical records that hospitals and doctors’ offices no longer needed but had to keep for legal reasons. ARC also stored government records and paper files from companies that needed their data to be super secure. It was a sleepy company until cloud computing really started to grow. At that point, ARC expanded into big data and data warehousing and became the go-to provider for mass data storage.”

Alister motioned to the group. “Apparently, at some point, they got it to archive humans.”

“So it would seem,” Will said. “But I never heard about anything like that, though we were big into genomic data storage. We were one of the leading cloud providers for biotech and pharmaceutical companies working on genomic medicines and breakthroughs in viral therapies. We had customized solutions and tailored security for specific industry verticals. In fact, I was dedicated to a team that worked exclusively for Genesis Biosciences.”

Maya turned at that and studied Will. Owen wished he could read the expression. Was it surprise? Concern? Owen thought she was going to ask him something, but she remained quiet.

“Speaking of security,” Owen said, “how do you log into one of these terminals?”

“Access is principally biometric,” Will replied. “A terminal first tries a retinal scan. If that fails, it goes to facial recognition, and then to a fingerprint. You can get basic access with a typed username and password, but you really can’t access much of the ARCnet, and the ARCos systems are off-limits to users signed-in via user ID and password.”

Owen glanced from the tablet to the contents of the other boxes. The solution for how to access the terminal was obvious to Owen. It was literally lying right there in front of them. He wondered if he was missing something. He had just met these people and was in no hurry to make a fool of himself if he wasn’t right.

“What have you tried so far to access the terminal?” he asked, still unsure of his idea.

“I’ve tried my biometric access and my backup user ID and password,” Will said. “We tried putting Bryce’s face in front of the tablet and obviously using his fingerprints.”

“Interesting,” Owen said, pacing across the room over to one of the black boxes. He reached inside and grabbed the smallest of the items that had been hidden in the command center. He had decided to try his idea—but not to discuss it first. If it didn’t work, he would just play it off.

He walked over to the terminal and, without a word, held up the metal key to the tablet, ensuring the terminal’s camera could see it. On the screen, an image of the key came into focus. Owen held it still and moved it so that the entire key was in view.

The tablet flashed a message:

Access key accepted.





Chapter Seventeen





Maya smiled. “How did you know that?”

“Just a hunch,” Owen said, echoing her words at the airlock.

“A good one,” she said, still amazed.

“I have to be good for something,” he said quietly, watching Will as he reached out eagerly for the now-unlocked tablet and began tapping away at it.