Jay nodded, his mind processing and rejecting ways to make this situation work for him. “But if what you’re saying is true and Diane sent me to the JTT to keep me off the radar, then the CIA really is compromised, and we can’t trust anybody on the inside. We need someone who isn’t affiliated with any intelligence agency.”
“Agreed,” Adam said, checking the time on his watch. “There’s a reason Diane wanted you kept in the dark. Let’s hear what she has to say about it. Then we’ll formulate our plan based on whatever bullshit she peddles.” He looked around the table. “As far as all of you are concerned, you’re hearing about Jay for the first time from her. Kincaid, I want you off-screen for this. Every asshole with a connection to federal enforcement knows about the JTT.Nobodyknows about you. I want to keep it that way.”
“Roger that,” Grant said, smiling like a serial killer in a vintage Orange Crush t-shirt.
“We ready to make this call?” Adam asked.
“Yeah, level five security protocols in place,” Jay replied.
“Good.” Adam nodded, and Grant moved away from the table to lean against the wall out of sight. “Let’s do this.”
Twenty minutes later, Jay’s mind was blown as he stared at his former mentor on the boardroom’s big screen. “It’s not possible,” he said, shaking his head. “The assignment was hypothetical, and we never successfully proved the theory. Plus, Professor Keating shut us down before we finished the coding.”
“You were shut down,” Diane stated, leaning forward in her chair, her gaze an exact duplicate of Adam’s in both intensity and color. “The project wasn’t. As soon as the potential for Dominion became known, multiple agencies outside the US took what your team started and put the pieces together. Several were successful. Dominion’s been tested on more than one secure stand-alone server. It works. We have proof.”
“Holy fuck,” Cody muttered. “So what you’re saying is, Jay led a team of international MIT students who developed a worm capable of infecting and controlling every linked computer system on the planet as part of a fucking school project, and whoever controls Dominion, controls the worldwide web?”
“Correct.” Diane nodded sharply. Once. “And whoever controls the web controlseverythingelse. Think about it. There isn’t a government, financial institution, or big business not linked to the Internet in some way. It’s the ultimate weapon for any superpower with their sights on world domination.”
“And multiple countries have the coding?” Adam said.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “We have the script, along with—”
“Russia, China, Germany, and Israel,” Jay interjected, recalling the citizenships of his multicultural teammates.
“We’ve also confirmed successful tests have been run in North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Japan,” she added.
“You set me up.”
To her credit, she didn’t try to deny Jay’s accusation. “The CIA knew China’s Ministry of State Security had infiltrated MIT through the international student program. We needed someone on the inside to keep their eyes and ears open but couldn’t send one of our own. You were my choice.”
Well, that explained the full-ride scholarship in lieu of a lifetime prison sentence. “So Xiu Li Yang is an agent of the Republic of China.”
“Was.” The man sitting next to Diane uncrossed his tatted arms. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, his face obscured by a full beard, wraparound sunglasses, and a ball cap pulled low, he looked like the operative he undoubtedly was. “Xiu Li Yang is dead.”
“How long ago, and by whose hand?” Adam demanded.
“Seven months,” his mother replied, shifting in her seat. “She was in CIA custody at the time.”
“You were trying to turn her?”
“Yes. She would have been valuable as a double agent.”
“We caught up to Xiu Li at the Russian Ukrainian border and brought her to a safe house in the south of France.” The bearded man showed no hint of emotion. “Eight weeks later, the team was ambushed. We lost three agents.”
“Someone’s infiltrated your organization,” Adam stated.
Diane nodded. “Multiple someones. We’re still trying to figure out who, which is why we need the JTT.”
“Who’s we?”
“I have a small team. A few agents I continue to have full confidence in. We know I’m under surveillance, so Mick here will be your primary contact. If you receive orders from him, you can trust they’re coming from me.”
“You think you’re a target?” Adam asked, his composure unwavering.
“We’re all targets.” His mother dismissed his inquiry with a flap of her hand. “The important thing here is to keep Jay secure, or the world as we know it comes to an end, and we’re all living under communist rule.”
“I don’t get it,” Cody said. “If the coding is complete, and it works, why is Jay the ultimate chess piece in the race for world domination?”
