Chapter 7 - JENNA'S CHOICE
The conference-room doors would not open.
Jackson hit the emergency release.
Nothing.
Martin Vale tried the wall panel.
Dead.
Leela looked at the countdown.
Twenty-eight minutes.
“What does he mean, Flight 312 takes off again?” Jenna asked.
Martin checked his tablet.
“No aircraft is scheduled under 312 until tomorrow.”
Leela looked at him.
“Unless he means the attack package.”
Martin froze.
She crossed to the conference screen.
“Mercer isn't talking about an airplane.”
Jackson understood.
“He's talking about the exploit.”
“Yes.”
The malicious code had been refined twice.
At zero, Mercer intended to release it.
Not into one aircraft.
Potentially into the fleet.
Martin went pale.
“If he broadcasts through the maintenance update network—”
“How many aircraft are connected?”
“Grounded aircraft plus active maintenance terminals.”
“Airborne?”
“Not directly.”
Leela looked at him.
“Not supposed to be directly.”
Silence.
Flight 312 had proven the architecture was not behaving as intended.
Jenna walked toward the terminal.
“Can we stop it?”
“From here?” Martin asked.
“No network.”
Leela studied the room.
Mercer had trapped the people most capable of stopping him in a conference room.
But he had made one mistake.
He assumed Leela needed Skycross systems to defend Sentinel.
She opened her handbag.
Jackson watched.
“What are you doing?”
She pulled out a small encrypted hardware key.
Jenna laughed in disbelief.
“You carry that around?”
“I've been living inside an airline currently attempting to buy my patents.”
Leela connected the device to her tablet.
Satellite secure link.
Elizabeth smiled.
“Never travel without independent communications.”
Richard stared.
“You brought an external network device into my secure boardroom?”
Leela looked at him.
“Would you like me to apologize before or after I save your airline?”
Jackson almost smiled.
His father did not.
Leela contacted Aerodyne.
“Block every Sentinel evaluation certificate ever issued to Skycross.”
An engineer answered.
“Already started.”
“Push revocation through partner gateways.”
“That could break compatibility on active maintenance stations.”
“Do it.”
Martin stepped forward.
“Wait.”
Leela looked at him.
“If you revoke everything, some grounded aircraft may lose diagnostic functionality.”
“Better grounded than compromised.”
Richard snapped:
“That could cost tens of millions.”
Leela turned slowly.
Jackson beat her to it.
“Dad.”
Richard looked at his son.
“Stop talking about money.”
Something in Jackson's voice ended the argument.
Leela returned to the tablet.
“Mercer still has proprietary fragments.”
Aerodyne replied:
“Enough to replicate parts of the exploit.”
Jenna suddenly said:
“I know where he is.”
Everyone looked at her.
She closed her eyes.
“When we were involved, he showed me a Skycross facility nobody used.”
“Where?”
“Old training center near Centennial Airport.”
Martin frowned.
“That building's abandoned.”
“No.”
Jenna looked at him.
“Not completely. There's a legacy simulator lab underground.”
Leela stared at her.
“Connected to Skycross?”
“It used to be.”
Martin checked records.
Then went white.
“The decommission link was never physically removed.”
Leela exhaled.
“There's his access.”
Jackson looked toward the locked door.
“We need out.”
Jenna stared at the ceiling.
“Fire suppression.”
Leela followed her gaze.
“What?”
“Boardrooms unlock during confirmed fire emergency.”
Richard stared.
“You want to set the room on fire?”
“No.”
Jenna grabbed a metal wastebasket.
“We create enough smoke for the optical detector.”
Jackson actually laughed.
“This is insane.”
Leela looked at him.
“You married me.”
“Good point.”
They burned paper beneath the detector.
The alarm sounded.
Doors unlocked.
Security rushed toward them.
Jackson shouted:
“Get vehicles.”
Federal agents were already approaching headquarters when Leela reached the lobby.
Agent Mara Chen took command.
“We go to the training center.”
“I’m coming,” Leela said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“This is an active criminal operation.”
“And he is using my architecture.”
“Dr. Voss—”
“Agent Chen, you can arrest Mercer. You cannot necessarily stop the broadcast.”
Chen looked at her.
Then Jenna stepped forward.
“I know the building.”
Jackson said:
“You're not going.”
Jenna looked at him.
“This is not your decision.”
For years she had wanted Jackson's protection.
Now she sounded offended by it.
Leela noticed.
Perhaps Jenna was changing too.
Or perhaps crisis simply burned away performance.
They reached the old training center with fourteen minutes remaining.
The building looked abandoned.
Broken sign.
Empty windows.
Federal teams entered first.
No gunfire.
No Mercer.
They reached the basement.
Rows of old simulator racks hummed.
Someone had restored power.
Leela ran to the network console.
“Here.”
A live upload.
82 percent staged.
Countdown: 09:41.
Martin connected remotely.
“Can you kill the link?”
Leela typed.
“No. He built a dead-man release.”
Jenna looked over her shoulder.
“What does that mean?”
“If we sever the system incorrectly, it broadcasts immediately.”
Jackson muttered:
“Of course it does.”
Leela examined the architecture.
Mercer had embedded his code inside an old Skycross maintenance package.
Elegant.
Cruel.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
“This isn't his design.”
Jenna frowned.
“What?”
“He knows how Sentinel works, but this containment bypass belongs to someone else.”
Leela enlarged the code.
Then recognized it.
Her stomach turned.
“Jenna.”
“What?”
“Did you ever publish fault-injection research?”
Jenna looked confused.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Graduate school.”
“Show me.”
Jenna pulled up an archived paper.
Leela compared.
Same logic.
Modified.
But unmistakable.
Jenna stared.
“He used my work.”
Leela looked at her.
“No.”
“What?”
“This specific optimization wasn't published.”
Jenna's face drained.
“How do you know?”
“Because the public paper doesn't contain this branch.”
Jenna backed away.
“No.”
Leela turned.
“You gave it to him.”
“I didn't.”
“Think.”
Jenna pressed her hands against her head.
Then stopped.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“My dissertation archive.”
“Where?”
“Personal cloud drive.”
“Password?”
Jenna looked at her.
Leela already knew.
The same password Mercer had once seen.
Years earlier.
Never changed.
Jenna whispered:
“He had everything.”
Guilt crushed her expression.
“I gave him everything.”
Leela grabbed her shoulders.
“No.”
Jenna looked up.
“You made a careless security mistake.”
“He almost killed people.”
“He chose to.”
“Because I—”
“Do not take responsibility for a man's deliberate crimes because you once trusted him.”
Jenna stared.
Leela heard the words as she said them.
Maybe they were for both of them.
Jenna began crying.
“I hated you.”
Leela stopped.
“I know.”
“I wanted to be better than you.”
“Jenna—”
“I came back to Skycross because Dad always talked about what Leela could have been if she stayed in engineering.”
Leela’s chest tightened.
“I thought if I became head of safety, people would finally stop comparing us.”
“We were competing in a race neither of us entered.”
Jenna laughed through tears.
“Yes.”
Countdown: 05:12.
Jackson stepped closer.
“Save the therapy for later.”
Leela looked at him.
He lifted both hands.
“Sorry.”
Jenna wiped her face.
“How do we stop it?”
Leela examined the code.
“We need Mercer’s root key.”
“He won't give it.”
“No.”
Jenna stared at the old console.
“Maybe he already did.”
“What?”
She opened her dissertation archive.
Hidden synchronization history.
An old device token.
MERCER-GM-7.
Leela's eyes widened.
“He used your cloud identity as backup authentication.”
Jenna nodded.
“If he never removed the recovery relationship…”
Leela typed quickly.
A credential challenge appeared.
Security question.
Jenna read it.
First place we flew together.
Her face changed.
Jackson looked away.
Leela said:
“Answer.”
“Santa Fe.”
Rejected.
Jenna frowned.
“Sedona.”
Rejected.
Countdown 02:31.
Leela looked at her.
“Think.”
Jenna started shaking.
“He used to say our first real flight wasn't on an airplane.”
“What does that mean?”
Then she remembered.
“The simulator.”
“What airport?”
“Hong Kong.”
Leela typed HKG.
Accepted.
A root recovery token appeared.
Leela smiled.
“Got you.”
She revoked the dead-man certificate.
Countdown: 00:48.
Upload stopped.
Everyone exhaled.
Then the screen changed.
REMOTE PACKAGE ACTIVE.
Leela froze.
“No.”
Martin's voice came through.
“What?”
“He split the payload.”
“Where's the second package?”
Leela traced the route.
Not fleet-wide.
One aircraft.
Already airborne.
Flight number appeared.
312.
Jackson stared.
“That's impossible.”
Martin answered.
“Charter repositioning flight. Skycross reused the number internally.”
Aircraft location:
35,400 feet.
Over western Kansas.
One hundred and seventy-six passengers had been added after a cancellation consolidation.
Jenna whispered:
“He knew.”
Leela looked at the live data.
The first corrupted message had already executed.
Flight 312's navigation feed disappeared.
Then air-data disagreement began.
Jackson grabbed a headset.
“Get me the cockpit.”
Martin's voice broke.
“We can't.”
“Why?”
“Mercer disabled normal company communications.”
Leela stared at another field.
SATCOM standby remained available.
But locked behind a maintenance authentication challenge.
Jackson looked at her.
“Can you open it?”
Leela's fingers moved.
“No.”
His face fell.
Then Jenna stepped beside her.
“I can.”
Leela looked at her.
“How?”
Jenna swallowed.
“Because the recovery token is still tied to my identity.”
They entered it together.
SATCOM opened.
Static.
Then a pilot's frightened voice came through.
“Skycross operations, if anyone can hear us, we're losing primary instruments.”
Leela took the microphone.
“Flight 312, this is Dr. Leela Voss.”
Silence.
Then:
“Dr. Voss?”
“Yes.”
“We've heard of you.”
Leela looked at Jackson.
So had the entire industry.
Except her husband.
The pilot continued.
“Tell us what to do.”
Leela stared at the rapidly deteriorating data.
Then another warning appeared.
CONTROL LAW DEGRADATION.
Her blood ran cold.
May you like
Mercer had moved beyond navigation.
This time, he was reaching toward flight controls.
