Kill Switch Read Online Free Page A

with the world than the combined professional world media of ten years ago. Social media could be used for a lot of good things, but it’d turned everyone into a potential spy or source. And, yeah, I really do know how paranoid that sounds, but it is what it is. I’m a cheerleader for the First Amendment except when I’m in the field, at which point I have the occasional Big Brother moments. My shrink is never going to go broke.
    Top asked, “We have thermal scans of our base and the others?”
    â€œThey’re next to useless,” I said. “The mountains there are thick with metal ores, so that screws things up.”
    Top sat back and folded his arms. He had dark brown skin crisscrossed with pink scars. Most of them earned since he’s been working for me. “Seems like they’re throwing us into a situation about which we have shit for intel.”
    â€œPretty much,” I said.
    â€œThe day must end with a Y, ” muttered Bunny.
    I opened my laptop and called up a few random images of Gateway that Bolton and Bug had each found. There were some preliminary floor plans that might as well have been labeled GENERIC LAB , and some photos taken by satellite showing unhelpful pictures of prefab buildings nestled against a snow-covered mountain.
    Bunny made a face. “We could give an Etch-a-Sketch to a rhesus monkey and he’d come up with better intel.”
    â€œNo doubt,” I said. “Bug found some shipping manifests that at least tell us what’s been brought out there. Lab equipment, drilling gear, six generators—two active, two emergency backups, two offline in case—and all of the other stuff necessary for establishing a moderately self-sufficient base. Staff of seventy. Ten on the science team, twenty support staff that includes cook, medical officer, site administrator, and some engineers. The rest are military but we don’t know what branch, so I asked Bug to run a MindReader deep search to find out. We’re waiting on additional intel now.”
    The whole DMS was built around the MindReader computer system. Without it we’d be just another SpecOps team. MindReader had a superintrusion software package that allowed it to do a couple of spiffy things. One thing it did was look for patterns by drawing on information from an enormous number of sources, many of which it was not officially allowed to access. Which was the second thing. MindReader could intrude into any known computer system, poke around as much as it wanted, and withdraw without a trace. Most systems leave some kind of scar on the target computer’s memory, but MindReader rewrote the target’s software to completely erase all traces of its presence. Bug was the uber-geek who ran MindReader for the DMS. I sometimes think Bug believes that MindReader is God and he’s the pope.
    Bunny asked, “What happens if we knock on their door and some goon from the People’s Liberation Army Special Operations Forces answers?”
    â€œThen all of us become a footnote in next year’s black budget report,” I said.
    Bunny sighed. “Like I said … this only happens to us on days ending in a Y. ”
    I wish I could call him a liar.

 
    INTERLUDE TWO
    OFFICE OF DR. MICHAEL GREENE
    EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK
    WHEN PROSPERO WAS ELEVEN
    â€œWhy do you hate your father?” asked Dr. Greene.
    â€œYou’ve met him,” said Prospero. “You tell me.”
    â€œLet’s focus on your feelings.”
    Prospero Bell sat cross-legged on the couch. He’d spent time setting the angles of his knees and ankles just so. He still wore his green jacket with the gray hoodie underneath. Each time he showed up for a new session there was more detail in the monster on the hood, and he’d begun adding colors to indicate light through water, as if the monster were submerged beneath a sunlit sea.
    Prospero sighed. Heavily and dramatically.