Daemon

screen. ‘But what is it? I mean, why would the Daemon bother to encrypt a log of GPS waypoints? Some sort of logistics tracking system?’
    ‘I had some thoughts on that. Notice that the data isn’t all GPS coordinates.’ He highlighted a section of the file. ‘There are these long, solid alphanumeric strings recurring in the dataset – like unique identifiers.’ He clattered at the keyboard again. ‘When I parsed the data, I was able to group all the waypoints for a given ID, and when I plot the waypoints in a GIS mapping program’ – he launched another program that displayed a map of southern Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. – ‘I get
this
…’
    The map filled with dots. Almost every inch was covered.
    Philips sighed. ‘Less than informative.’
    He nodded. ‘At this altitude, perhaps, but when we move in closer, things get clearer …’ He zoomed down to an overhead view of the streets in a city; the clean vector lines of named avenues filled the screen with an irregular grid. The data points visibly ran along the lines of the street grid, occasionally veering off the marked roads.
    Philips rubbed her face, her exhaustion starting to catch up with her. ‘Just thousands of data points with no meaningful association.’
    Ross turned to her. ‘Not if I could relate this data with something I knew the Daemon did. Then we’d have a better idea what we’re looking at.’ He kept his gaze upon her.
    ‘And did you?’
    He turned back to the screen and started tapping at the keyboard again. ‘The spammer massacre. It was still going on at the time of this intercept. Fifty-two spammers were killed in the region covered by this dataset. Eight killings occurred in the relevant time range. I had Merritt get me the addresses from those eight individual case files, and I keyed them into a GIS program to obtain the approximate GPS coordinates of each address. Then I searched this intercepted data set for close matches.’
    She smiled slightly at him.
    ‘I found a match.’ He tapped a key, and an aerial photograph of a suburban business park filled his screen. A close series of waypoints intersected in the center of the building, then parted. The longer set continued down through the building, concentrating its activity in one area.
    ‘Merritt got me in touch with the building’s architect. They sent me an AutoCAD file of the floor plates. I aligned that blueprint with the GPS grid. Bear in mind: three men were murdered here at the same time period covered by this GPS intercept. I marked the rough location where the bodies were found on this floor plan. Look at this, Nat.’
    He brought a detailed floor plan up onto the screen. The GPS waypoints tracked down the hall, then entered a suite labeled
1010
and tracked to the site where each body was found, retraced steps back to two of the bodies, then exited down the hall.
    Philips felt a tingle run down her spine. ‘My God. This is the Daemon’s command system.’
    ‘I think it’s more than that. This type of coordinate tracking system seemed familiar. Look …’ Ross swiveled his chair to reach for a nearby workstation, nudging past her. He brought up a different 3-D floor plan in vector lines. ‘This is a game map for CyberStorm’s
Over the Rhine
. I’m viewing this level in their map-editing tool,
Anvil
. Matthew Sobol wrote big parts of this program.’ Ross pointed at the screen. ‘See these dots? Those are sprites – bots, computer-controlled characters that react to players. These tracking lines indicate the coordinates those bots will follow in response to an event elsewhere in the system.’
    She leaned in to look closely at the screen. ‘It’s just like the GPS dots.’
    ‘Exactly. In essence Sobol is using the GPS system to convert the Earth into one big game map. We’re all in his game now.’
    Philips stared at the screen, still trying to decide whether this discovery was good or bad news. ‘It took the most powerful computer on Earth nearly a month to crack the encryption on this block of data, and the encryption changes every few minutes. We can’t jam all the transmissions because the Daemon uses commercial spectrums.’ She turned to him. ‘How do we use this information, Jon?’
    ‘By deducing the existence of certain things. For example, there must be some way for Daemon operatives to interact with this presentation layer. If my theory holds, then the Daemon must have created equipment that permits its operatives to