CODE OF CONDUCT

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The first microdrone struck a security camera and disappeared inside it.

It didn't explode. It didn't ricochet. It unfolded six slender legs, latched onto the housing, and fed a black filament through the maintenance port. The lens immediately swiveled toward the courtyard. Then every automatic door in the engineering building began to close.

"Get inside!" a staff member shouted.

The order had the opposite effect. Students ran in every direction, some trying to get inside before the doors came down, others heading for the main exit. The buzzing grew louder as dozens of H.I.V.E. devices swarmed onto poles, phones, and electrical boxes.

Morgan grabbed Maya's arm before the crowd could sweep her away.

"Don't touch anything connected to the network!"

"I figured they weren't here to deliver pizza," Maya replied, knocking over the coffee and using the table as a barrier.

Leo closed the portable screens and pressed them to his chest. A microdrone landed on the bench less than a meter away from him. Its black surface opened like an iris, revealing a needle charged with violet light.

Morgan shoved Leo to the ground.

The shot hit the table, leaving a smoking scar in the concrete.

"This isn't a data breach," Leo said, pale. "They're armed."

Near the fountain, a student was trying to get a young man who'd lost one of his crutches back on his feet. Morgan looked for the two agents keeping their distance. One was guiding students toward the open stairway; the other was using his own coat to cover a burning battery. They weren't ignoring the attack. They were busy keeping it from killing anyone.

"The side passage!" Morgan pointed toward the student. "Behind the fountain, not through the door!"

Maya repeated the directions louder. Three people changed course. The exit was still too narrow, but now someone was helping the young man through.

"Low-energy pulse," T.O.N.Y. reported through Morgan's glasses. "Enough to incapacitate a person or set a battery on fire. The swarm is taking over the campus infrastructure, but it's still searching for my core."

The young man in the dark jacket remained standing among the fleeing people, protected by a ring of empty space around him. He worked the tablet with a calm that didn't belong amid the screams.

"I need to get to the controller," Morgan said.

"You need to get out," T.O.N.Y. shot back. "Actual security is on the way."

"The emergency network's compromised. If the swarm reaches the substation, it could lock people inside the labs."

Maya pulled Morgan behind the table as another drone flew past.

"Stark, this might be a good time to explain why a bunch of killer bugs just called you by your last name."

"They didn't."

"They didn't have to. You're looking at them like you already know them."

A crash came from Building 3. The lights on two floors flickered and died. Overhead, a campus display switched to the gray octagon.

"Overload at forty percent," T.O.N.Y. said. "The protocol's using the internal lines to search for a Stark key. When it finds the pendant, it'll try to copy the signature."

Morgan spotted an overturned maintenance cart near the fountain. Inside were tools, cables, a diagnostic emitter, and a backup battery. She looked at Leo's laptop, then at Maya's backpack.

"Do you guys still have the hydraulic arm prototype with you?"

Maya narrowed her eyes.

"You want to fix something now?"

"I want to wreck the whole swarm."

Morgan crouched and ran for the cart. Maya and Leo followed because staying put seemed worse. A drone dove at them; Maya knocked it out of the air with her thermos. The device hit the ground, still moving, and Leo covered it with his backpack.

"Plan," Maya demanded.

"The drones use a mesh network. If we figure out the frequency they use to sync, we can send out a targeted pulse and disrupt their coordination without shutting down every device on campus."

"Targeted interference, not a campus-wide EMP," Leo corrected her. "The emitter can target that signal, but it can't sustain that load. We need to stabilize it."

Maya opened her backpack and pulled out a cylindrical actuator.

"The coil from the hydraulic arm."

Leo pulled a clear case containing a dark sample from his pocket.

"Flexible carbon alloy. Still unstable."

Morgan looked at both of them.

"We might be able to stabilize the emitter."

"To do what, exactly?" Maya kept the component out of her reach. "You know something we don't."

The young man in the dark jacket raised the tablet. The swarm changed direction.

"Later," Morgan said. "Right now, please trust me."

Maya hesitated for a single second, then handed her the actuator.

They worked on their knees behind the cart. Maya opened the battery housing and reconnected the terminals. Leo wrapped the carbon alloy around the coil to contain the discharge. Morgan took off her glasses, opened a maintenance port in one arm of the frame, and connected the system to the prototype.

"T.O.N.Y., find the frequency."

Maya froze.

"Who's Tony?"

The golden dot projected a small grid of data into the air. The voice came through the glasses' speaker, loud enough for both of them to hear.

"We can explain the family connection later. The swarm is switching between channels. I'm working out the synchronization interval, but I don't know how long it'll stay the same."

Leo stared at the glasses.

"Is that a Stark AI?"

"It's an interface," Morgan said. "And we need it right now."

Their shock would have to wait. The octagon on the campus screens reached seventy percent. Two lab doors closed, with students pounding on them from the other side.

"If we transmit across a wide frequency band, we'll knock out the building's medical systems," Leo said.

"Then we track the frequency hopping," Morgan replied. "T.O.N.Y., project the sequence into my field of view. Maya, release the charge in pulses, not all at once. Leo, your polymer needs to contract at exactly the right moment to keep the coil from splitting apart."

"And if we get it wrong?" Leo asked.

"The battery explodes," Maya said.

"Thanks for being so direct," he muttered.

Morgan felt her breathing grow shallow. The noise, the movement, the eyes of dozens of people, the knowledge that the attack had started because of the pendant: it all pressed in on her at once. She searched for a fixed point and found three screws on the side of the actuator.

One. Two. Three.

Feet on the ground.

Air in.

Air out.

"Morgan," T.O.N.Y. said more quietly. "You don't need to look calm. You just need to choose the next step."

She nodded.

"Maya, current at twenty percent."

"Twenty."

"Leo, polymer tension."

"Stable."

"Now thirty-five. Wait for the channel change... now."

The coil vibrated. The dark alloy tightened around the core like a muscle. A white arc flashed between the terminals but stayed contained.

The young man realized what they were doing. He left his position and advanced across the courtyard, pulling a stun baton from his jacket.

"He's coming," Maya warned.

Morgan didn't look up.

"Forty-eight percent. Leo, hold it."

"The polymer's heating up."

"Two more seconds."

The drones gathered above them in a dense cloud. Part of the swarm spiraled straight down toward the improvised coil.

Maya let go of the terminal and intercepted the agent. He swung the baton at her; she dodged, but the second swing caught her shoulder and sent her crashing into the cart.

"Maya!" Leo took a step.

"Don't stop!" she shouted, clutching her numb arm.

Morgan saw the emitter's sequence line up with the swarm's channel change.

"Now!"

Leo activated the contraction. Maya, still on the ground, hit the trigger.

The emitter let out a crack. The indicator light burned out before Morgan could pull her hand away.

The drones' formation fell apart. The ones hovering over the cart went dark; the rest lost coordination and collided with one another.

Hundreds of tiny black bodies fell across the courtyard like metallic hail. The octagon disappeared from the screens. The emergency doors stopped halfway down, then began to rise.

The agent looked down at the dead tablet. Maya took advantage of his surprise and knocked him down with a clumsy but effective leg sweep. Before she could restrain him, he threw a capsule to the ground. Dark smoke blanketed the area. By the time it cleared, the man had vanished into the crowd of students.

Leo tried to open his right hand. His glove had stuck to a reddened patch of his palm. Morgan moved to help him, but he pulled back out of pain, not anger.

"Don't pull it off," Maya said. "Let them take care of it at the clinic."

Her arm hung at her side. Morgan looked at the smoking battery and only then saw how much danger the two of them had put themselves in by following her instructions. Neither was celebrating.

A staff member manually unlocked the last door. Those who came out didn't look at the projection or the burned-out device. They hugged the people waiting for them.

Morgan opened the logs in her glasses.

"His signature is still on the network."

"Let him go," T.O.N.Y. said. "We have a bigger problem."

The interface projected an incomplete map of satellites. A file that had been locked inside the pendant now appeared with its first layer of security breached.

PROJECT ICARUS: INDEX EXPOSED.

"What's that?" Leo asked.

Morgan didn't answer right away. She'd never seen that name.

All humor vanished from T.O.N.Y.'s voice.

"The attack wasn't meant to capture you. It was meant to force me to authenticate a Stark-level defense on a public network. O.B.I.S. used the response to unlock the index of a project Tony buried after the invasion of New York."

Maya held her injured shoulder, looking from Morgan to the glasses.

"And are you going to tell us why your dad's secret AI is inside something you wear to class?"

Sirens were drawing closer. Students were already filming. Above the courtyard, news drones were appearing on the horizon.

Morgan put away her glasses.

"Yes. But not here."

On the dark screen of the tablet the agent had abandoned, one final message appeared before the device shut down:

DOOR ONE OPEN.

Elias Voss already had what he'd come for.

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