Chapter 11 - The Cloud Node Awakes
HONK.
The truck’s horn blared once, sharp and aggressive. The infotainment console on the dashboard lit up with a brilliant, blinding white glare.
"Nate!" Elena shrieked, pointing toward the street.
Slicing through the quiet suburban mist, two black, unmarked Cadillac Escalades were idling at the curb directly in front of their driveway. No headlights. Just the sinister red glow of their parking lamps.
The driver-side door of the lead Escalade opened. A man stepped out, wearing a charcoal wool overcoat. He wasn't rushing. He wasn't panicking. He held an iPad Pro in his gloved hand, the screen glowing with an identical diagnostic layout to the destroyed CradleMate unit.
"Elena Reed," the man called out, his voice smooth, cultured, perfectly amplified through an ear-piece microphone. "You're in breach of your non-disclosure and intellectual containment protocol."
Nate shoved Elena behind him, slamming the rear truck door shut to shield Maya. "Who the hell are you?!"
"I’m Arthur Vance, Senior Vice President of Field Operations for Omega-Neuro," the man said, taking two deliberate steps up the driveway. "And you have proprietary neural telemetry sitting in the back of your vehicle. Telemetry that belongs to our investors."
"She’s a human baby!" Nate yelled, his voice echoing off the neighboring houses. "Somebody help! Call 911!"
Not a single light turned on in the neighborhood. Every house on the street sat completely dark.
Vance offered a cold, thin smile. "The cellular towers in this five-block radius are currently undergoing emergency fiber maintenance, Mr. Reed. Nobody is coming to help you. And frankly, considering your wife took three hundred thousand dollars in unvetted research grants to bring that prototype home, calling the authorities would simply land her in a federal penitentiary for industrial espionage."
Elena stepped out from behind Nate, her voice trembling. "Arthur... the prototype failed. The sensory shock... it almost killed her."
"It didn't fail, Elena," Vance said calmly, tapping the glass of his tablet. "The sync reached fifty-one percent before the unit was damaged. The synaptic mapping of an infantile fear-response under mechanized duress is groundbreaking. The Department of Defense will pay twenty million for the complete profile."
May you like
Vance looked at Nate, his eyes dead as flint.
"Hand the child over for forty-eight hours of non-invasive clinical extraction. We finish the map, we wipe the memory loop, and you get your daughter back with a trust fund large enough to buy this entire town."
