Page 78 of Shadow Blind

Numbness crashed into exhaustion, freezing him from the inside out, until nothing but emptiness remained. There was no compromise here. No way they could work their way through this. No way they could remain together.

Not without destroying each other.

Chapter thirty-one

Day 15

Washington, D.C.

Clark leaned over his laptop and punched the execute key. A new screen popped up.

NNB26 prototype: Deactivate YES. NO.

Clark clicked on the YES square and slumped against the backrest of the computer chair.

Processing…

“It’s done.” Clark picked up his cell phone from the table in front of him and scanned the call log. No incoming call from Kuznetsov. Grimacing, he set it back down.

The stainless steel table his laptop sat on was a blur in front of his burning eyes as he swiveled his chair to face the lanky, thick-boned man in the white lab coat. Lovett was hunched over the desk that contained the computer and screen that monitored the Atomic Force Microscope that was mounted to the top of the NNB26 tank. Clark could access the AFM screen himself, but he’d have to close out of the programming window, navigate to the AFM sequencer, enter a slew of passwords and—he yawned. He was too damn tired for that. It was easier to let the good doctor monitor the AFM while he kept the programming window open. Although, if this last programming patch didn’t work, he was all out of fixes.

“Well?” Clark flinched at the sharpness in his voice as the question hit the purified air.

It had been five long days, with very little sleep, and his head was giving him hell, so were his spine and shoulders. The human body was not built to hunch over a laptop for days on end. A steady dose of aspirin wasn’t even easing the pain anymore.

“Nothing. They’re still scrambling around like ants on their mound.” Dr. Lovett rolled back his chair and straightened, arching his spine. His hands migrated to the small of his back. “No disruption at all this time.”

“Damn.” Clark was too tired to put any effort into his frustration. “They’re circumventing my new programming faster each time.”

It had taken his NNB26 prodigies half an hour to reactivate after his first round of programming. By his fourth attempt to shut them down, they hadn’t deactivated at all. They’d followed the same pattern through each of his reprogramming attempts. His nanobots were fabricated to allow a complete reset, followed by multiple reprogrammings. After all, each batch of bots sold would need their own kill switch. Customers would not be pleased if their multi-million-dollar weapon was unexpectedly shut down because a different customer activated their weapon’s off button. Before a batch of bots were sent off to their new owners, they’d be reset, then reprogramed to a specific code triggering deactivation.

Or at least that had been his intention.

But he’d also expected that resetting the prototype would wipe their programming and memory clean. But that wasn’t what appeared to be happening. Resetting and deactivating them didn’t wipe their memory. They simply never reset.

They were adapting to and circumventing his new programming faster than he could create the codes. A wave of exhaustion swept over him. If he were lucky—very, very lucky—a fresh approach to the kill switch problem would hit him after he got some sleep. Until then, there was nothing more he could do.

He picked his cell up again. Still no call from Kuznetsov. Which was strange. The Russian had been insistent about putting the bot prototype up for sale ASAP. At the very least, he’d expected the arms dealer to return his call and attempt to bully Clark into releasing their cash cow into the world prematurely, regardless of the consequences.

Kuznetsov wasn’t big on thinking things through.

“It’s time to consider implementing the fail-safe. This prototype is too dangerous to lose control of.” His thumbs still pressed into the small of his back, Dr. Lovett swiveled his chair to stare at the osmium tank across the room. “Since the kill switches no longer work...” The worry on his face clearly spoke of his reservations. “It’s my opinion we should hit NNB26 with the hydrofluoric acid.”

Clark cast a tired glance around the lab. White walls, glass windows, and endless stainless-steel countertops surrounded him. Half a dozen stainless steel desks, facing each other in units of two, were spread throughout the room, supporting everything from computers to monitors to various types of electron microscopes, to piles of reference materials, along with pencils, pens, legal pads, loose sheaves of handwritten notes and electronic tablets.

His lab and the power grid supplying Nantz Technology were hardened against electromagnetic pulses. The NNB26 prototype was as well. He hadn’t wanted his bots disabled if someone chose an EMP burst to shut his microscopic prodigies down. Dousing the tank with the acid was simple and would effectively dissolve the little bastards. They’d threaded silicon molecules through the bot structure to enable the fail-safe. The acid would dissolve the silicon, as well as most of the organic components. His little prodigies would cease to exist.

Dammit.

Five years of development, and hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain.

Dammit.

But Lovett was right. The weapon was too dangerous without the kill switch. It was also worthless. Nobody would buy it if they couldn’t control it.

Still, he wasn’t quite ready to give up on the prototype yet. Not when he was too tired to think clearly, so tired he might be missing a simple solution. A couple more days wouldn’t hurt anything.

“Wait on the fail-safe for now.” Clark’s tired gaze traveled to the osmium tank. “NNB26 isn’t going anywhere.”

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