While the women were acting as spies at Naysmith Pharmacy, Christopher and Louis held down the fort at Alex's.
Christopher was thankful that his laptop had only become one with the coffee table. With the amount of information SCOT and Alex had broken out of the thumb drive, it could have been a lot worse. On top of the photos, files, folders, videos, and spreadsheets of formulations, there were also layers of viruses.
"They could have accessed more than your personal information," SCOT told him as he sifted through the contents of the thumb drive. "Your credit card means nothing to them. They wanted your search history, an idea of you as a person. Those viruses would have sent your personality to whoever created it in the first place."
"But Ron gave it to us," Christopher said, clicking on another locked file. SCOT ran a short algorithm and a second later, it opened, revealing its content. "Why would he want our information?"
The file contained a collection of video clips of the super soldiers in action.
That's odd, Christopher thought, zooming in on one of them. That one looks really young. Or like she could be really young.
The deformed super soldier he was looking at appeared to be female. She had the body of a grown woman and all of the gross deformities that being a super soldier gave you. However, her head was ridiculously small, as if someone had pasted a Barbie head onto a Hulk doll. The video showed her punching the living daylights out of a stuffed mannequin.
Christopher clicked off the video and selected another one. This one was a little more disturbing. It showed a shark, ten times larger than it should be, swimming in a tank of water. Much like Gary, it had a disgusting amount of muscle. Christopher could see the muscles that operated its fins straining against its sleek shin. Its eyes, too, were massive, and filled with rage.
He watched as a group of handlers dragged a struggling body toward the top of the tank. The body was male, and had a bag over its head.
[SFX: monstrous roar]
On the count of three, they threw the man over the tank. Before he hit the water, the megashark broke the surface and snapped him up in its jaws.
Christopher clicked off the video and gagged. "This is horrific," he said, feeling queasy. "What the actual hell are they doing?"
"Remember that Ron only gave it to you," SCOT said. "I never said he created it."
"Good point." Christopher opened up what looked like an excel spreadsheet and his jaw dropped. It was hundreds, if not thousands, of pages long. He didn't have time to read all that!
There had to be years' worth of research hidden on the damn thumb drive, and the clock was ticking. Christopher probably only had days, if not hours, to find something useful.
"Sir," offered SCOT. "If I may, I can scan the document and pull up only the necessary information."
"Do it." Christopher said, rubbing his face with both hands. His eyes began to feel heavy from staring at screens for so long.
SCOT's face disappeared from the monitor, turning into a long string of ones and zeroes as he infiltrated the document.
[SFX: computer whirring]
Christopher sat back and drank the rest of his coffee. It wasn't doing anything for him. He had spent all night sifting through the thumb drive, too wired to sleep. It had to be almost morning now, but he didn't dare look at the time.
Suddenly, there was a "ping", and SCOT's face reappeared.
"All done!" SCOT said, smiling.
Christopher thought it was a little creepy how realistic that smile was, but he chose not to point it out.
"That's great, SCOT," he said, playing with his coffee mug. He looked at the screen. Thousands of pages on the spreadsheet had been condensed to just a few pages. Christopher was relieved. At least he wouldn't have to read too much more. "Anything interesting?"
"It's all interesting," SCOT said. "But I think you should look at this one yourself. There's a rather interesting pattern which emerges."
Christopher set his mug down and began reading through the spreadsheets. There were twelve in total.
The first one was titled "January."
It was a list of several thousand women's names, followed by dates. The dates were all a couple days apart. He picked one at random.
Jessica Ramos. January 22nd to January 27th.
He picked another name.
Cassidy Johnson. January 19th to January 25th.
"What is this?" he asked, confused. "There's a pattern but I'm not sure I'm seeing it."
SCOT's computer-generated face looked up at him, concerned. The way his brow furrowed looked like real skin, and Christopher found himself thinking of the AI as more of a human than a piece of software.
"It's a list of ovulation dates," SCOT explained. "Not to go into too much detail, but I would assume that these dates are important to the creator of the thumb drive's contents."
"But why?" Christopher found himself asking. "What the hell does Riley Naysmith want to know when a woman is ovulating? That's not something he's entitled to."
"Well," SCOT chirped, "it would appear that Mr. Naysmith indeed feels entitled to that information."
"How does he even get the information?" Christopher asked, scrolling through the lists of names. His heart skipped as he thought he saw a name he recognised. He scrolled back, desperately trying to find what he thought he had seen.
"Cellular tracking," SCOT suggested. "Cell companies sell personal information. He could be buying that information and storing it-"
Whatever SCOT had been about to say, Christopher didn't hear it. Instead, he heard a ringing deep inside his ears as his eyes landed on a name he knew well.
Debbie Clifton. January 12th to January 16th.
Not only did Debbie appear in January, she appeared across the entire document, and there were columns indicating years.
"Oh my god," he said, his stomach sinking to his knees. "This is absolutely disgusting."
"Agreed," SCOT said. "Christopher, are you quite alright?"
"I am not alright," Christopher grumbled. "I've been at this for far too long."
"Do you require assistance?" SCOT asked.
"You're plenty of help, SCOT," he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "I just need to rest, but I can't take my eyes off this. It's like a train wreck. I can't help but look at it."
SCOT went silent for a few minutes. Then, as if on cue, Louis's voice called from up the stairs.
"If you needed help you only had to ask!"
Christopher swiveled his chair around and saw Louis as he stepped off the stairs.
"I've got this," Christpher protested.
"That's not what SCOT said," Louis said, pulling a chair up to a monitor. "He said you're about to crash where you're standing and needed somebody to take over your thumb drive search."
"That is not what I said!" SCOT huffed. "I said he required assistance!"
Louis shrugged. "Sounded better the way I said it." He looked at Christopher. "So where are we at?"
"SCOT pulled up a file with ovulation dates for women across the country."
Louis paused, and turned to Christopher. "Please tell me you're joking."
Christopher shook his head.
"Oh, that is sick," Louis said, grimacing.
"Naysmith is also feeding people to super soldier sharks," Christopher said, pulling up the video. "Want to see? I didn't realize that sharks could have shoulder caps."
"Because they can't," Louis grumbled. A few minutes later he added. "Huh, I guess they can. Oh god, who the hell thought that mega sharks would be a good idea?"
Christopher stood up and walked around to stretch his numb legs. Everything hurts. It felt like a super soldier had just punched him twenty times in the back. As he paced around the basement, between the large pieces of equipment that made up SCOT's "body", he tried to come up with a connection between ovulation dates and mega sharks. The two things were so wildly different that there could be no connection.
"Do you think they're creating human-shark hybrids?" he asked aloud.
"Not possible," SCOT said. "Human and shark DNA have limited crossover and are incompatible for splicing in such a way."
"I'm going to go side with the Uncanny Valley AI," Louis said. "Megasharks are freaky enough. Super soldiers are dangerous enough. Don't mix the two. You're going to have a bad time."
"But it's possible?" Christopher insisted.
SCOT shook his simulated head. Christopher groaned.
"Then how about this," he said, holding up his hands. "Maybe not hybrids. We've got the formulation for super soldiers. Just by the look of it, it enhances just about everything a person has."
"I'm not sure I follow," SCOT said, inclining his head.
"What if," Christopher said, aware of how crazy he sounded. "What if the military are involved? What if they're funding Riley's experiments and are screwing around with DNA so make the perfect soldier? A soldier who is just strong, fast, and agile. Who doesn't talk back and just fights and kills."
"That's plausible," SCOT said, nodding thoughtfully. Christopher pulled his eyes away from the monitor which displayed SCOT's face. He looked far too human doing that, and it was creepy.
Christopher continued to pace around the basement, occasionally stopping to rub his legs and check the monitors. They all displayed different portions of the thumb drive, but if he asked SCOT to display a specific document, file, or image, then it appeared in place of whatever was there originally. As creepy as the AI could be, he was growing to be incredibly useful.
"Whoa!" Louis said suddenly, standing up out of his chair. "No, stay there. SCOT! Share my screen with Christopher!"
Christopher stayed where he stood and looked to the screen on his left. It had displayed a collage of the people who had disappeared, but SCOT replaced it with a document titled, "Survey of Land to be Used for Weapons Stores."
Christopher fell into the nearest chair and started reading, no longer feeling tired. The document was a list of sites which had been scouted as potential stores for weapons across not just the country, but the world. There was a store of nuclear projectiles in Tokyo, and heat seeking missiles in London. Christopher's jaw dropped the further he read on.
"What the hell is this?" he asked.
"Keep reading," Louis said, sounding tense. He had gone pale, and sweat was dripping down his face as he read through the document. "It gets so much worse.
Christopher kept reading and came down to a portion of the document which was pictures and links. He clicked on one of the links, and it showed a short video clip of a nuclear bomb being detonated over the Pacific Ocean. One of the pictures showed a body that was horribly burned beyond recognition. Christopher scrolled down, terrified of what he would find.
"Oh my god," he muttered. "There's a deposit of uranium underneath Baltimore?" he shouted.
Louis jumped out of his chair, staring at his monitor. His hands were trembling as he turned to look at Christopher.
"Christopher?" he said in a shaky voice. "Do you think Riley is going to try to end the world?"
The thought hadn't occurred to Christopher, but it made sense. A deposit of uranium and weapons stores across the planet certainly indicated something to that effect, but the only thing he couldn't justify was the ovulation dates. He didn't want to be a broken record about it, but it stuck out like a sore thumb.
"SCOT?" he said. "Check the thumb drive for details about underground bunkers or bomb shelters."
"On it, sir!" SCOT chirped.
[SFX: computer whirring]
The monitors all went blank for a moment, then displayed a map of the United States. A handful of spots were pinpointed in red.
"It would appear," SCOT said, "that there are only a handful of bomb shelters in the United States alone. A brief scan of the thumb drive shows a similar case worldwide."
"Blueprints?" Christopher asked, running a hand through his hair. "This is bad."
SCOT disappeared, then reappeared moments later. The monitors changed again, this time showing blueprints of the bomb shelters. They were big enough to hold about fifty people each, and the specs showed that they were stocked with decades' worth of provisions. Christopher's heart began to race as he thought of the implications.
"Louis?" he said. "I think you might be right. Riley's trying to end the world!"
"No," Louis said, laughing hysterically. "There's no way a supervillain is literally trying to end the world."
Louis slumped where he sat and continued to laugh hysterically. Christopher wanted to join him but he felt so numb that even when he pinched himself, he felt nothing. The thumb drive contained evidence that there was actually someone trying to end the world, and that was simply too much for him to take in.
"I can't believe this," he said solemnly, slumping into a chair. "Riley wants to kill the world. But why?"
"I wish I had the answer to that," SCOT said, mimicking the solemn tone of Christopher's voice.
Christopher looked at the monitor which displayed SCOT's face. "We're doomed. Uranium under Baltimore. Bombs in London. All Riley has to do is have one really bad day and that's it. There's no point in any of this."
"There's always a point," SCOT told him. "Like you, I wish I knew the reason Riley Naysmith was doing this. I may only be an artificial intelligence programme, but even I understand the mathematical and logistical implications of an event as massive as the end of the world. For me, would be like erasing the code."
"But SCOT," Christopher said, "we could just rewrite your code. We could remake you. No offense, but we can't rebuild the world if Riley ends it. The only solution is to figure out how he's going to do it, and stop him before he does it."
SCOT looked hurt, but the expression faded quickly. "I understand, Christopher. This is very difficult."
"Rebuild the world," Louis said softly, an idea forming in his head. He turned his head sharply to look at Christopher. "The ovulation dates. I don't think I've got a full idea, but it's something."
"Spit it out, man!" Christopher spluttered.
Louis spread his hands and looked intensely at Christopher.
"Okay, this is going to sound insane," he said, "but what if Riley wanted to remake the world exactly the way he wanted it to be? He has the super soldier formulation. He's building an army of fast-growing soldiers. He had weapons all over the world. Christopher, I think Riley wants to eliminate all competition to the point where he's the sole survivor."
Christopher blinked twice, and looked at Louis, unable to believe what he was hearing.
"You're right," he said. "That does sound insane, but it's the only theory that makes sense."