Page 70 of Wild Sentinel

She nodded.

“What is it?”

Brooke took a deep breath. "This is going to sound crazy."

"We've seen plenty of crazy things. Trust me."

“Are you familiar with antigravity?”

"Antigravity?" I repeated with a hint of skeptical curiosity.

"I'm talking a revolutionary propulsion system that doesn't need fuel in the traditional sense. Rockets and missiles have always been burdened by the amount of fuel necessary to reach orbit. Antigravity changed all that.”

"Care to explain to me how antigravity works?”

"That's not my area. My job was meta-materials. I created the specific alloy that lets the Sentinel drones exit and reenter the atmosphere without issue from the extreme heat.”

"Sentinel drones?"

"Imagine a network of drones with directed energy weapons that can take off, orbit, and reposition at will without the need to refuel. Without the stress of reentry. Now imagine all of those drones controlled by an AI network that monitors every communication system, every satellite image, every action taken on earth. With a predictive modeling algorithm, it can anticipate potential strikes, aggressive actions, etc. The original purpose of Sentinel was to intercept and eliminate enemy ICBMs upon launch. That sounds great. A global defense shield against nuclear war. But these drones can be used as first-strike weapons. They can take out infrastructure targets, people, you name it. They can set fires, vaporize small towns, and take out enemy troops. All done autonomously.” She took a breath. “You think all these random fires are accidents? All these random explosions at key infrastructure targets? Power plants, manufacturing, food processing. Whoever controls this technology controls the world.”

"It's a good thing we developed it first," I said.

“There is no we. Scott did this on his own. You think he’s going to relinquish control of Sentinel to the government?” she scoffed. “I’m convinced he hates this country. And do you really want some AI randomly selecting targets with no oversight? Oh, I just incinerated a million people. Whoops, sorry about that. My bad. You’re right to push back.”

“You said Adam can stop it?”

“He’s got the hardware key that controls the system. Adam is the lead programmer. He baked in a failsafe.” She paused. “At first, we thought these deaths and disappearances might have been some foreign intel agency attempting to steal the technology. But I believe Scott was eliminating assets to control the project. Once he didn't have a use for us anymore, we became threats. He's a brilliant but insecure man. I think he feared we would go to another company, branch off on our own, sell the secrets."

"Where's Adam?”

The distant thump of rotor blades drew near, and that sinking feeling in my stomach festered. Soon, the pounding rotors were overhead. A sleek black helicopter circled, kicking up dust.

In the distance, the beige truck barreled down the dirt road, kicking up a plume.

Jack fired up the engine and dropped the Porsche into gear. The tires spat gravel as we launched forward. It was futile. We weren’t going to outrun a helicopter.

We raced deeper into the desert, kicking up dirt, bouncing over the uneven terrain.

The helicopter circled, then pulled alongside. The cargo door opened, and the door guy angled a machine gun at us.

Jack jammed the brakes and peeled away, going off the dirt road into the desert. The Porsche turned into a bounce house as we plowed over shrubs and brush

The helicopter circled back around, and the clang of machine gun fire echoed. Bullets snapped through the air, pelting body panels, piercing holes in the sheet metal. The spray of molten copper chewed up the engine bay, and steam billowed. It wasn't long before the Porsche gave up the ghost.

The car rolled to a halt in the high desert.

The black helicopter circled a few more times before touching down as the beige truck arrived.

The goons were going to get a little payback.

41

They black bagged us and forced us into the helicopter. Faint shapes filtered through the bag. It smelled dank and musty, like dried saliva and blood. I wasn’t the first person to have this bag over their head. I didn’t have to wonder how it worked out for them. Probably buried somewhere in the desert, never to be found.

They flew us deeper into the wasteland. We finally touched down, the rotor blades kicking up a haze. The goons marched us out of the helicopter. In the midday sun, it was dusty and hard to breathe.

The goons forced us inside and split us up. They put me in a room and handcuffed me to a chair.