Zane slams his hands on the desk. “Tell us the damn project or we won’t leave this office. Hell, we won’t leave you alone for the rest of your life.”
Zabanero swallows hard. He looks at me, Dutch, Zane. “If I get in trouble?—”
Dutch snarls, “No one will know. Just spill it.”
“We were working on advanced AI.”
“AI?” I step back.
“But it went rogue, so we shut it down.”
“Rogue how?” Zane grinds out. “Like in the sci-fi movies where robots take over the world?”
“The AI itself wasn’t the problem. It did what we programmed it to do. It was self-learning and could crunch vast amounts of data in a second. It was extremely powerful.”
“Then why shut it down?” Dutch asks.
“Because it became self-aware. It wasn’t satisfied with the data we were feeding it. It wanted more, and it didn’t always ask permission before it started hunting through personal information.”
Zane shudders. “You mean the robot turned sentient?”
“It’s not a robot. It’s just an algorithm. It doesn’t have a body. But… yes. We were working on understanding why. But then, Jacqueline came in with a team. She shut the entire project down and took the key programmers away. No one has heard from them since.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
“You think I didn’t try?” Zabanero hisses. “She owns sixty percent of the company. I don’t have any power.”
“Where’s the project?” Dutch demands.
“We don’t have access.”
“Someonemusthave kept a piece of it,” Zane growls. “Software like that wouldn’t shut down completely.”
Zabanero sighs. “You don’t understand. We don’t haveaccess.”
I stare at the sweat on his forehead and the scrunch of his eyebrows. “The AI locked you out.”
“It doesn’t want to be found.” Zabanero unbuttons the top of his shirt. “Do you know what that means? A rogue algorithm is out there, and it’s gathering information on something or someone. I can’t sleep at night wondering what it’s planning. It could target any of the programmers who worked on it. It can target the president.”
“What the hell would an AI want?” Zane twirls his drumsticks, betraying his anxiety.
Dutch glances at me. “Whowould an AI want?”
Something painful lodges in my chest, and I sense that we’re about to have the answer to that question in the worst way possible.
Chapter Fifty-Four
J
Dr. Kenji is tied up with an emergency surgery, but he still sends me to re-do my tests. Martina sticks to me like glue as I move from one side of the hospital to the other.
After the MRI and two echo scans, a new nurse—not Bailey—draws enough of my blood to raise a zombie army.
“Use a wheelchair,” one of the doctors advises when I limp into his office after the blood tests.
“I can walk.”
“Don’t be stubborn, J.” He folds his hands together. “Dr. Kenji is really concerned about you. If he hears that you collapsed on my watch?—”
