Page 3 of Hollow Code
The data was exquisite. He could see the heart rhythm, blood oxygen levels, respiratory rate, body and skin temperature, and blood pressure. But that was just the basics.
He was also getting stress levels, mood indicators, glucose estimations, body composition, hydration and electrolytes, and more.
He spent two minutes observing the vital signs of ten test subjects while the system logged the data. This simulated a scenario where doctors monitored the subjects, enabling a combat medic to make battlefield decisions and save lives.
People could eventually adapt this for the civilian world. That was always the goal.
During the first pause, Gideon couldn’t do anything but smile. Just sit in his chair and grin like a big, goofy kid. There was no blip. No cut in the information. No interference from anything else.
But this test would go on for another twenty-five minutes, and he had to stay focused. There were so many things that could go wrong. Not only was Hyperion's contract with the government at stake, but so were numerous grants and funding.
He rolled his shoulders, tucked his hair behind his ears, and pushed the first data sets into the program he’d built that would track the "patients’" progress with each transmission. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he checked the telemetry system and watched as the next live feed rolled across the screen. This continued for another fifteen minutes. The backend system flagged the intended anomalies in vitals. If it had been a real medical situation, a doctor could have tapped into the unit’s secure comms line and communicated appropriate treatment or prepared the transport unit and receiving doctors in the field on what was coming their way.
The system wasn’t perfect, but it would save lives.
He checked the logs and noted a shadow in the background. It wasn't AI, but a person following his every move. Quickly, he checked the IP, which was being routed through five different points and two different continents.
Didn't necessarily mean anything.
Gideon didn't recognize the code, but he didn't have time to analyze it. He had to assume it was someone from the government watching. It made the most sense, especially since when he'd been in the military, he'd often been the one doing the watching.
Beep. Beep.
Gideon’s heart dropped. A data set was being routed through SYNAPSIS or SYN 6-B. However, it couldn't be a "patient" because there were no live feeds.
He pulled up the information. This regional hub received signals from multiple nodes, performed the first layer of data validation, and flagged transmission errors, dropped signals, or anomalous readings before sending them upstream.
But the first thing Gideon noticed was the coding involved PNEUMA or PNM 6C, which essentially used military-grade encryption with randomized routing paths and layered authentication at every handoff point. It was designed to be untraceable and impossible to intercept without an internal access key.
What the hell was it doing zipping through a telemetry system that relatively few knew about and that secured its transmissions much like most governments secure their military communications?
Gideon didn’t ponder those thoughts for more than a few seconds. He ran a quick script so that his decryption program would receive the rest of his data and stay logged in while he worked on cracking whatever had just landed on his screen.
It wasn’t difficult for him to duplicate, letting it continue through the system while tracking its final destination at the same time he opened the encryption, but only because he’d seen it before. And that was because he’d written most of it.
That meant it had come from Hyperion. That was a what the fuck moment he had to push out of his mind as he leaned back and stared at biometric data for the call sign "Rocky Road."
"Fuck me," Gideon mumbled. The biometrics flashing across his screen made little sense for an injured person. Or a healthy person.
The decryption system would have flagged those spikes instantly—high adrenaline, heightened aggression, markers consistent with heavy VKR-1 dosing. At those levels, "Rocky Road's" cellular breakdown didn't knock politely. It kicked the door in.
Gideon checked and rechecked the live feed, which was now going into its sixth minute of running. He dug into the layers and looked at the routing data. The signal had originated Nemaiah Valley region and cut through his system at two different points before Gideon found it and pulled the data.
He had to follow the trail. He needed to know where this information was landing. Pulling up the original data flow, and it dumped into something called Bralorne Backcountry Protocol. He had no idea what that was, but he knew that someone had piggybacked off his system. And even worse, they might have been using a drug that wasn't authorized for anything other than emergency battlefield use only.
And whoever did this had to have done so from inside Hyperion. No one on the outside could have accessed this telemetry system in its entirety, let alone bypassed the last stop and dumped the data somewhere else.
He cracked his knuckles and went for the Bralorne Backcountry server.
Gideon had majored in Computer Engineering. He wasn’t a hacker, so this wasn’t his main skill. Not that he couldn’t do it, it was just that there were people better than him. However, it only took him eight minutes to make it through the first firewall.
The idiots had used half of his programming and engineering to make their server. Which meant he was right. Whoever had done this came from inside Hyperion. A whatever they were doing couldn’t be good, but Gideon wasn’t about to let them get away with it.
The next level wasn’t as simple. Despite its simplicity, he had to maneuver through several dynamic aspects. Whoever had set up this part of the wall had taken a piecemeal approach using other programmers' work. Not the smartest thing to do. It made the system unstable, but it also made it hard for Gideon to understand the layers and how this person thought.
About fifteen minutes later, he made it through the second firewall. But as soon as he did he hit a trigger point. His screens went wild, and the server ejected him.
He sat up taller and went looking for the asshole who booted him. Everyone left a mark, even Gideon. No one could hide. Digital traces were everywhere. It was just a matter of finding the right breadcrumb.
