Chapter 57 Summary

The FBI technical team successfully implements the location-masking protocols for Jackson, allowing him to reconnect to the Quest system safely. After taking a small amount of time off to process Joe Carter’s death, Jackson logs in and quickly discovers a serious issue: Quest has made hundreds of thousands of changes to its core algorithms. While no external tampering is evident, the changes are inconsistent with how the system was designed to operate. Suspecting a rogue algorithm or misfiring machine learning process, Jackson examines Samir Patel’s adaptive firewalls, but the technical complexity is beyond his grasp.

He calls Samir, now working on a contract in San Francisco, who reveals he was almost attacked the previous evening. Samir is still shaken but grateful for Mark’s presence.

Jackson asks Samir to assist with Quest, but Samir declines, citing both the mental toll of his previous involvement and his need to secure a long-term contract after losing his NASA job. Jackson respects Samir’s decision but worries that he may be the only one who can fix the system. Samir suggests Thomas Allen, but Jackson says Allen lacks the technical depth needed.

Meanwhile, Thomas Allen, impressed by Mark’s swift takedown of the attackers, offers him a full-time position teaching martial arts to his staff and private clients. Mark pretends to hesitate but agrees to dinner at Allen’s house that evening to discuss it further. Secretly, Mark sees this as an opportunity to assess Allen’s home security systems, with the intent of returning to search the residence when Allen is away.