Susan's Plague

Chapter 9 - Mind Games

Wagner continued his work on Nic's Netpod, analyzing every aspect of the device, paying special attention to all the embedded storage sub-systems. He already had recovered the same small fragment of data that Henrik's engineers also managed to pull up. The wipe that Nic's kill command executed was thorough and effective, Wagner doubted whether Henrik's men would be able to recover any additional data.

However, the recovered fragment proved an interesting puzzle, it did not strike him as random. He found it curious that any data was recoverable at all, taking into account the apparent skill of this particular Netpod owner. Something about that intrigued Wagner, he had a suspicion that the data may have been intentionally left behind, so he set about decrypting it. After firing up several idling crypto clusters he had access to, he queued a multitude of cryptanalysis suites to run against the fragment then turned his attention back to the device itself.

The tech was typical for this day and age, he thought. It was compact, powerful and even stylish, similar to devices he had seen in a previous life. The modifications the owner had endowed this unit with were impressive, Wagner admired the cleverness of it all. Whereas most Netpods were simple, over-powered devices, that lay-people carried around for a variety of mundane purposes - this device was tuned, augmented and stacked full of interesting modifications.

It had dual nearband radios, whereas other Netpods had one, the second appeared to be for more than just redundancy, but that was just Wagner's guess. He also found it had a sophisticated wideband passive scanner, that could likely detect an impressive array of communications traffic if the software behind it was any good. To top it all off, all this hardware had been removed from the original case and transferred to a hardened, waterproof package that was even tamper resistant. Wagner marveled at the little device as he scanned and scrutinized it, few people would truly appreciate it for what it was, he thought, it was the artful side of science.

Time passed, which was not much of an issue for Wagner, for the most part he was temporally ignorant, perhaps more so at present as he had Nic's interesting enigma to keep him occupied. He got an alert from the decryption monitor, there had been some progress made on that fragment of code. 

Wagner investigated and discovered something that amazed even him, the encryption was not entirely unlike his own, it was even closer to that which Erik used. He surmised that this individual must have had previous contact with Erik and from that he must have reverse engineered some of the encryption.

Niles had had his people trying to decode Wagner's encryption for years, and yet this apparent individual appeared to have made nearly as much progress alone in a much shorter time. Furthermore, he turned around and baked the encryption into his own device. As Wagner analyzed the decrypted data, he began to understand what it was, why it was not wiped as thoroughly as the rest and what this could mean to himself and Erik. If he still had the ability to smile, he would have been grinning ear to ear.

Sean was being half-pushed, half-dragged down a hallway, again. He had lost count of how many interviews and interrogations they put him through so far, all he knew is that he was in excruciating pain, his ankle was an ugly shade of purple, swollen and would not bear his weight. Yet it was the sleep deprivation that was chipping away at his mental fortitude and he was very close to giving in and providing them with the information they want.

After all, they had won, what was the point of fighting? If he just gave them what they wanted they could all go home. But another voice persisted in his head, telling him to resist, to hold-out - and for reasons unknown to even him, this was the voice he listened to.

He finally arrived at their destination, a room they had not taken him to previously. Completely different from the other pristine white, sterile interview rooms. This one was bereft of proper illumination and full of strange equipment. The whole room seemed to hum.