CHAPTER ONE
Qualcomm Institute, UC San Diego
San Diego, California
January 7
“Have you seen the numbers coming out of London? The death rate is becoming exponential.”
Dr. Estrada was staring at his own double screen, a cup of lukewarm xocolatl near his hand. He rubbed his nose and looked over at his research assistant, Illari Chaska, who was staring at her laptop screen with alarm in her eyes.
“What’s going exponential?” he asked in confusion.
“The outbreak in London. Haven’t you been following it on Twitter?”
Dr. Estrada lifted the cup to his lips and winced as the tepid drink reached his tongue. He set it down again. “I thought the outbreak was in Spain?”
She ran her fingers through her long, dark hair, the silver rings she wore sparkling under the overhead lights. Her oval face was tight with concern. “That’s where it started, but the cases are spiking worldwide. London, Madrid, New York. Thousands are dying. It’s become a pandemic.”
Dr. Estrada wrinkled his nose. “I wonder if it started in a biolab. You know they’re always working on scary stuff.”
Illari shook her head. “The WHO hasn’t determined its origin yet, but it started spreading from cruise ships right around Christmas and New Year’s. Ten cases. A hundred cases. A thousand cases. Like I said, exponential.”
“That’s terrible,” Dr. Estrada said. If it was growing that fast, it could end up being bigger than the Spanish flu. That should horrify anyone. “Any cases in California yet?”
“Not sure. There’s not a single article about it on the CDC’s website.”
“Then how do you know all of this?”
Illari smirked. “I’m Gen Z. We know things.”
That was true. When Dr. Estrada was in college, there’d been no internet, no smartphones. Quite the difference from the research center they sat in now. He gazed around at the wall full of monitor screens showing the LiDAR data he’d been collecting on Maya ruins in Guatemala. None of this would have been possible back then, but here was proof that the impossible could become possible.
The Qualcomm Institute was a joint partnership between the university and one of the biggest tech companies in the world—nearly every cell phone on the planet had some piece of hardware that Qualcomm had designed. The servers in the building were the true breakthrough, though. They were state-of-the-art, running multicore processors custom designed to crunch terabytes of data quickly. Data that the LiDAR technology had produced from his flights over the jungles in the Yucatán—primarily Guatemala.
Grad students like Illari were archaeologists and computer scientists rolled into one. That was the new generation. A group of engineers were making a virtual reality system that would enable users to visit the newly discovered Maya ruins with a headset in an air-conditioned room, something he hadn’t thought possible when he was Illari’s age.
Dr. Estrada leaned back in his office chair with a creak and folded his arms. “Exponential growth means quarantine measures. Our trip to Belize might get canceled.”
His cell phone rang in his pocket, the ringtone a clip from “Smooth” by Santana. Illari shook her head at the “old-man” music and went back to her laptop. The caller ID showed a San Diego area code but no name.
“Estrada,” he said, answering the call. Glancing at Illari’s monitor, he saw some charts and graphs with data from a website that was unfamiliar to him.
“Is this Dr. Estrada from UC San Diego?” asked a male voice.
“Yes, who is this?” he asked. He switched over to a browser and tapped into the search bar to look for information about the pandemic. Very few articles came up.
“This is Special Agent Foster from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. San Diego field office.”
Dr. Estrada’s heart clenched with fear. Abandoning his search, he sat up straighter. Sweat began to tingle across his body. Illari looked over her shoulder, brushing her brown hair from her face, and gave him a questioning look.
“Um . . . yes? What can I do for you, Agent Foster?”
Illari’s eyes widened with surprise, her nostrils flaring slightly. He gave her a bewildered shrug, trying to play it off, but he was filled with the same kind of dread he’d felt upon seeing a patrol car’s lights in his rearview mirror on the freeway a few weeks ago. Except this was worse. Much worse. He’d done something foolish, and he was about to pay for it. His stomach turned sour, and his armpits began to leak sweat.
“Dr. Estrada, do I understand correctly that you do research on ancient ruins? Maya specifically.”
“Y-yes. Yes, I do, sir. Am I in any trouble?”
On his last trip to Guatemala, he’d persuaded his pilot to continue north after they were done scanning the Xmakabatún ruins. They’d flown across the Mexican border, to an uncharted and unexplored place within the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. Because of the dense jungles in that area, there was no way to see it by satellite, but that’s where the LiDAR equipment was so powerful. The pinpricks of laser light could penetrate the miniscule gaps in the leaves and hit the ground of the jungle floor, revealing changes in the topography. Like the symmetrical rise of a pyramid compared to an irregular hilltop. Dr. Estrada’s research was primarily focused on ruins in Guatemala because of grants and funding provided to that country. The Mexican government had forbidden permission for his research, but the temptation had been too hard to ignore . . .
It had happened over a year ago, right before Christmas. Estrada and his pilot had gotten far enough to see part of a temple protruding from the jungle. A man had been on the ground, looking up at them. It had been . . . disarming. And then a storm had appeared out of nowhere and nearly blown their airplane out of the sky. Dr. Estrada had been in mortal dread that they would crash into the jungle and die, but they’d made it out somehow. He hadn’t told anyone about that little excursion. Not the dean at the university. Not his own wife. For months afterward, he’d dreaded getting a call from someone in the US government responding to a complaint from Mexican authorities. Now, perhaps, it had come.
“Why would you think you’re in trouble, Dr. Estrada?” asked Agent Foster.
Dr. Estrada lowered his voice and hunched his shoulders. He was sweating as if he were in the server room instead of an air-conditioned office space. “How can I help you, Agent Foster?” His voice was shaking. That made him sound guilty, right?
“If I understand your research, Dr. Estrada, you use laser technology to map ruins in the Yucatán Peninsula. There was a National Geographic special on it a few years ago. I watched the clip.”
I’m in trouble. I’m in deep trouble. He took a worried sip from the cup of xocolatl, anticipating the coldness but welcoming the flush of energy it gave him. It was a special drink made in the Yucatán. He’d discovered it from an Indigenous tribe that had little contact with the outside world and had purchased the beans and other ingredients so he could make it himself. It wasn’t cheap, but it was so much better than coffee.
“Yes. That’s my research. I’m with the Qualcomm Institute that—”
“I know, Dr. Estrada. I also understand that your work is primarily out of Guatemala and Belize. But have you ever used your equipment across the border in Mexico?”
Deep trouble. I’m screwed.
“W-why do you ask?” Dr. Estrada said. His hand was literally shaking. Illari was giving him a questioning look that wasn’t helping his nerves. His mouth was dry. He needed to use the bathroom very badly.
“You sound nervous, Dr. Estrada. Is everything all right? Are you alone?”
“No . . . I’m . . . my research assistant is with me. Several others. Winter quarter just began, so there are a lot more people here this week.”
“I won’t take up much of your time, Dr. Estrada. But can you answer my question? Has your research ever covered areas inside Mexico?”
Don’t lie to the FBI. His stomach clenched further. If he admitted to it on the phone, he might get charged with a crime. But why would Agent Foster be calling him if he didn’t already know? They’d hunted down the plane. They’d probably spoken to the pilot. The bribe that Dr. Estrada had paid to keep him quiet wouldn’t be enough for him to lie to the FBI.
“Yes. Yes . . . I have.”
He was doomed. His career would be over. All his work would be questioned. He never should have coaxed the pilot into entering Mexican airspace. He cursed himself for being a fool.
“You have?” The agent sounded startled. “And you used your LiDAR equipment?”
“Yes,” Dr. Estrada said, wincing, waiting for the blow to fall.
A pause. Then Agent Foster continued. “Have you examined the data? I know that you’ve found thousands of ruins in the jungle down there. Did any strike you as being exceptionally large or well preserved?”
“Or inhabited?” Dr. Estrada said, half choking.
“You found something.”
Dr. Estrada collected his breath. “Yes,” he whispered. “I’ve told no one, not even my colleagues here. Only the pilot knows.” He turned away from Illari so she couldn’t see his face.
“But the data is there? At the institute?”
“Yes. There are terabytes of data on those ruins.”
“Thank you, Dr. Estrada. The information you’ve provided is very useful. We’ll be in touch soon.”
“Am I in—” he started, but the call ended abruptly.
“Who was that?” Illari asked worriedly.
“Someone from the FBI,” he said. “They want to talk about my research. Our research.”
“Did it have . . . anything to do with me?” She looked guilty as she said it, and it occurred to him that she might have secrets of her own.
“Not specifically, no,” he muttered.
The rush of adrenaline from the conversation and the drink was making his head buzz. He needed to talk to the dean. Having the FBI show up at the university would be controversial. There would be questions asked. His future was at stake.
Illari turned back to her screen, which now shone blue. Seconds later, the wall of monitors all turned blue. Code began to stream across the sea of blue. As Dr. Estrada slowly rose, looking at the monitors arranged on the desks around them, they all went blue. The grad students were gasping in surprise and disbelief.
“What’s going on?” someone asked incredulously. “The servers are down. All of them.”
The pit in Dr. Estrada’s stomach deepened. A moment before, he’d been terrified of having to confess everything to the dean. But this was worse. A data breach was happening in real time. Hackers had infiltrated the institute.
He looked at Illari, who was frantically tapping on her keyboard.
“What’s happening?” he asked her.
“Ransomware attack,” she said. “They’ve taken over the institute servers. Everything is locked down.”
“You mean the data on the servers can’t be accessed?” he nearly shouted in terror.
“How did they get through our firewall?” she said, perplexed. “We have the best security in the world!” She slammed her fist on the keyboard. “It’s all locked away.”
“But surely the backups—”
Dr. Estrada’s throat caught. What if the man on the phone hadn’t been with the FBI?
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
