Project Apollo

Chapter 30

Broadcast News Association

Washington, DC

11:35PM

Porter Nash rolled his bike into the BNA bullpen and approached his desk quickly. A subtle build in activity brewed as reports came that the White House was in lock down. Pulling on the hand brake, he stopped at his desk and jumped off the bike seat. With one arm's sweep, he cleared his desk, sending crumbled balls of notes to tumble to the floor.

He brandished the flash drive from his pocket, as if it were the jewel of the Nile and inserted it into the USB port of his desktop computer. Ambitious for the story, he navigated his Desktop to see the contents of the folder, but to his shock the folder was empty.

What the hell? There's nothing on it?

Then as he continued to navigate through the folder, reopening and closing it to ensure it was in fact empty, his PC froze. The cursor stopped and ignored all commands from the mouse.

Damnit!

Porter smacked his computer upside the monitor and fell back in his chair in defeat. It was a common feeling in investigative journalism, but no story of his career had so many dead ends.

As he reflected on the mystery of the flash drive he leaned forward and restarted his computer. The computer ran through its loading process as it rebooted. As the computer beeped its logon, Porter pounded his fist on his desk and racked his brain for any open possibilities in the case.

It doesn't make any sense!

Then the computer connected to BNA's network. Porter turned his focus to the ceiling tiles and failed to notice the quick upload to the network that occurred in the corner of his screen.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the dark quarters of a subterranean tunnel a row of computer monitors stood. Distant activity sounded down the echoing archways of the deserted space, but it did not faze the operator of the computer, as he stared through his dark rimmed glasses at a blinking light on the opened window displayed on his monitor. He jumped alive at the sign and brought his phone to his ear, immediately.

After two short rings Harak Khan's voice answered on the other end.

"Yes..."

"Our worm has accessed BNA's network and is awaiting our command to activate," the computer operator mentioned.

"Good..." Khan's voice rolled in sadistic tones. "Go ahead and activate... let's throw this city into a panic."

"Understood... activating the worm now." The phone clicked, the computer operator began typing the command. The command window showed his user name.

Rogue7

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Porter spun in his chair, one part perplexed, and two parts frustrated with the seemingly pointless meet with the shadowy figure.

I put my life at stake for this story and what do I get? Nothing... not a damn thing!

At that moment, the TV monitors flashed and a message appeared on the screen. There was an immediate commotion in the production room of the news set next door. BNA employees quickly gathered before the screen, reading the message.

We interrupt this program to bring you Breaking News.

The message remained on the screen for a full minute, allowing the staff and the American public to gather around their television sets. The anchors on set maintained frozen smiles, confused as to why their image was not coming through the feed. The producers on duty had no answer for them and began shouting in the control room at the staff.