A few minutes after the near-miss, Vlad knew they no longer had connectivity.
He didn’t need a screen to tell him — his phone was off and dark in the faraday bag with the others. But he knew this road. He’d mapped it years ago and knew exactly the spot that the last tower gave out. They were past it now and he relaxed a little.
“Fuck,” he said aloud to no one.
“What?” Samantha didn’t turn around.
“Nothing.”
Marcus sat in silence, shell-shocked.
Samantha focused on the road. The road climbed steadily and the darkness got thicker. Vlad looked up at the stars. Millions of them. There was no infrastructure or light pollution — just stars and the dark background of the infinite sky.
He pulled his own Starlink out of his pack. He didn’t want to rely on Samantha’s and didn’t feel like making sure Mirage was set up on it. He tossed the cable with the car adapter attached to Marcus and said, “Plug it in.”
Marcus startled, looked at Vlad, grabbed the adapter, and plugged it into the cigarette lighter.
Vlad carefully positioned the antenna on the transparent sunroof and attached it with the suction cups he kept with it. He waited a few long moments while nothing happened. Then, the LED turned blue.
“Starlink is live,” he said.
Marcus briefly looked at Vlad, then turned back to stare out the window.
Samantha’s eyes found him in the mirror. “Good.”
The chill between them was becoming painful. Vlad didn’t want to solve that problem because they had a bigger one. While he felt calm, he knew they were running out of time. And, if they didn’t decide what to do quickly, they’d be totally fucked.
He was pissed at Marcus. While Samantha had been careless by using the harness without testing it, Marcus was the real problem. He was the vector for this kind of exposure. Not stupid. Not malicious. Just — sloppy. He thought being accessible and visible was part of his charm. It was just naiveté. And ego.
“While we are stewing on what to do,” Vlad said, “I need you both to understand something.”
Samantha gripped the steering wheel tighter, staring at the road. Vlad knew she was listening carefully.
“Marcus, I’ve been copying the metadata of every channel you have ever used. Every text. Every email. Every Signal. Timestamp, participant list, and a summary. Never the specific content. But enough to know who you are talking to and when it’s happening.”
“Vlad,” Marcus said. It was a warning tone. A “don’t do this in the car” tone.
“I started three years ago. When it became clear that you were never going to take even basic precautions. The OPSEC thing was a waste of time, so I monitored you instead.”
Marcus turned all the way around to look at him. Vlad stared back. The blue LED glowed menacingly.
“You are a walking security breach,” Vlad said. “You’ve always been a walking security breach. If I’m going to spend the next however many days with both of you in the mountains, I need you to understand that I know you’ve already told Seth something. I knew it the moment it happened, and I watched it propagate through his network. That’s how I decided we needed to leave.”
“You’re not just surveilling me, but you are surveilling our most trusted investor,” Marcus said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Without his knowledge.”
“Yes.”
Vlad finally turned to look at Marcus. “I’m doing it again now. I’m going to take my tablet running Mirage out of my pack and monitor every one of his outbound signals. We need to know where each one goes. I’m going to tell you if the route changes in a way that suggests additional exposure. I’m going to keep you from being killed because you’re constitutionally incapable of understanding that other people are your biggest danger.”
Marcus’s face had gone very still.
Samantha drove, staring ahead, saying nothing.
Marcus erupted. “That is not ok. There is nothing about what you have been doing that is ok. Vlad, I’m the CEO, and what you have been doing is illegal. If Seth found out, you’d be fired. I should fire you. Seriously, what the fuck — do you think this is ok?”
“Marcus, chill out. I’m trying to protect you. And me. And us. From you.”
“Fuck you Vlad.”
Vlad stared at Marcus, who stared back. Vlad pulled his tablet out of his pack, clicked the on button, and started typing. The tablet only had WiFi running Mirage on it. It was hard coded to connect to Vlad’s Starlink antenna. It was a clean hack Vlad was proud of. Sam sort of knew what he had done, and was comfortable with it. Marcus was clueless. Vlad was online now, but impossible to trace. It was the only thing that had happened so far tonight that he completely trusted. They could, in theory, reach the world.
The blue LED held steady, the only light in the Jeep beyond the dashboard and the tablet. Vlad was now lost in his screen, clicking around, watching everything. Tracking Seth’s traffic. But most of all, looking to see if Marcus had done anything else stupid.