Upgrade(80)

He parked on the curb on D Street SW, and we hurried down the walkway to a door on the quiet side of Constitution Center, which was, incidentally, the same door I’d gone through trying to escape this building more than a year and two upgrades ago.

I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to double-cross me this soon, a mere twenty-two hours after I’d shown up in his bedroom in the middle of the night, but I hoped I hadn’t misread him. There was always a chance he could subject me to virtual interrogation and torture, with some choice chemical adjuncts. Take a run at getting me to explain what I’d injected into his system.

As we drew near, the door opened. My old partner, Nadine Nettmann, stood on the threshold, smiling.

“She knows everything,” Edwin said.

As I stepped into the stairwell and the door swung shut behind me, Nadine threw her arms around my neck.

“You okay?”

There was a lot to unpack there. I just said, “Better now.”

I’d experienced so little by way of physical touch since being kidnapped from this building almost fourteen months ago, and I could feel the interaction trying to lockpick the door to my emotional triggers.

“What?” Nadine asked. “You don’t hug anymore?”

I embraced her.

After a moment, we came apart.

She looked up into my eyes. I saw compassion. Pity. Mostly fear. But that was natural in her position—seeing me for the first time in over a year, wondering what I’d become. Wasn’t it?

“You look different.”

“Made a few changes.”

Edwin said, “Shall we?”

“I’ve got everything ready,” she said. “Just what you asked for, Logan.”

We climbed the stairs to the second floor, which housed the MYSTIC servers. The corridors were silent. Lights, on motion-activated sensors, flickered on above us as we moved down an empty hallway.

“I’ve got you set up in here,” Nadine said, opening the door to a small, sterile office. The walls were bare. No personal flourishes. It had been empty for some time. The desk was clear except for the two desktops and keyboards I’d requested.

Because of the threat of cyberattacks and the ultra-sensitive data sets at play, MYSTIC could only be accessed via the stand-alone terminals deep within Constitution Center.

“You’re logged in on my credentials,” Nadine said. “What else do you need?”

“How long do I have?”

“You should probably be out of the building before six A.M.,” Edwin said. “We’ll keep an eye on the corridor. I don’t think anyone will recognize you, but it’d be ideal if as few people as possible know you’re back.”

“Want me to stay in here with you?” Nadine asked. “Second set of hands.”

“Thanks, but probably better if I work alone on this part.”

They left, closing the door after them.

Before my second upgrade, I would’ve been overwhelmed at the prospect of finding Kara with MYSTIC—so many potential avenues of exploration. I wasn’t so much looking for her now as confirming that my theory was right. I suspected that Kara was working out of either New York City or Miami. I would know momentarily.

I set to work, dividing my consciousness so I could type on each keyboard simultaneously.

At my fingertips, I now had one of the most powerful search engines ever created, and if I could cross-reference a handful of curated data groups, I would find her.

First things first—she would need a virologist. I had more of a background in genetics and virology than Kara did. Even now, as I was approaching her second-upgrade threshold, I would still need a virologist to engineer the perfect virus to carry the upgrade.

The database returned 378 names. I filtered the group down to 24 ranked candidates based on contributing factors that could lead to criminality. Since they were already in the system, they all had recent photos I could use to scrape the CCTV databases. I labeled the images from the likely-to-be-involved virologist data group “Block A.”

At the same time, on the other computer, I was building my second group. In Glasgow, the man I’d performed an emergency tracheotomy on had told me he’d been a friend of Kara’s from her military days. And while Kara and I were staying at the motel in West Virginia, I’d asked if she was still in touch with the people who rescued her in Myanmar. She’d answered, “They’re some of my best friends.”

She had upgraded Andrew, and I suspected she’d done the same for at least some of her other military cohorts. I could see now, looking back, that these were the only people in the world she really trusted.

Andrew had been on the team that freed her from the Myanmar militants. His full name was Andrew Kegan. There had been seven other Green Berets on Kara’s rescue mission. Two were KIA during the op, but I ran checks on the remaining five with the clearance Edwin had gotten me for the DoD servers.

Nathaniel Jacks. Alexis Hurley. Rodney Viana. Deshawn Brown. And Madeline Ortega. All still alive.

Nathaniel Jacks was presently stationed in Pyongyang. Alexis Hurley was in jail in Arizona (again) following a drunk and disorderly arrest.

Madeline, Deshawn, and Rodney had all been honorably discharged.

Deshawn Brown’s social media posts suggested he was recently divorced and living in Pensacola, Florida.