In the Crosshairs

At ten o'clock that evening, the subterranean research laboratory of Hayes & Co on Mount Vernon Street was eerily silent. Located three levels beneath the historic Beacon Hill brownstone, the facility was an ultra-secure, climate-controlled bunker lined with polished acoustic dampening tiles, clean-room glass enclosures, and rows of air-gapped supercomputing towers. Outside, a thick, freezing coastal fog had rolled in off Massachusetts Bay, blanketing the cobblestone gaslit streets of Boston…