She looked at it, painting a confused mask on her face and tried again. More red lights and angry beeping. She tried again, this time letting out a frustrated groan.
“Problem?” one of the men finally said.
“They were supposed to add me to the badge access list,” she said.
“You new?”
“Just doing a day trip from corporate,” she replied. “Supposedly there’s an issue with one of the servers, and they wanted me to take a look.”
“That’d explain that stuff from last week,” one of them said. “I swear they made me reset my password five times on Tuesday.”
Dana suppressed a chuckle.
“Hopefully that won’t be necessary again,” she said instead. “Could one of you . . .”
“Oh, sure,” the man who’d offered her the cigarette said.
He tapped his badge on the reader, and it blinked green and chirped. The door clicked, and he pulled it back for her, making a sweeping gesture with his arm.
“Milady.”
Dana laughed and thanked him before striding in.
The interior was as nondescript as the exterior. Linoleum floors, fluorescent lights, and steel doors with small windows lined the hallway. She could hear clanging and banging from deeper in the building, but it was more of an echo that was barely audible above the hum of the industrial air conditioner. Cool air slipped under her jacket sleeves, sending goose bumps up her arm.
She walked down the hall, her heels clicking on the tile, and looked through the windows of each door she passed. Finally, she found one that opened into a larger room lined with cubicles. She pulled the metal handle and stepped inside.
There was the quiet buzz of conversations and typing keys, and a few heads turned as she walked in. One man in the cube to the right of the door stood.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Dana couldn’t see his top lip under his mustache, and his shirt was stretched tight enough by his gut that his nipples were clearly visible under the thin fabric.
“I’m from IT,” she said, holding out a hand. “They asked me to come look at a few of your systems after the issues you had last week.”
The man’s eyes went wide.
“What about the guy that was here yesterday?”
Dana shrugged. “I just go where they tell me.”
The man frowned in confusion, his mustache again making it difficult to see the full expression. “He said he fixed it,” he said.
“Oh, great,” Dana said, opening her bag and digging out a clipboard. “I’m happy to take a long lunch if you’re sure you’re good. I’ve been running ragged trying to get a handle on this issue. If you can just sign this, I’ll get out of your hair.”
She handed the clipboard to the man, and he looked at it like it was a poisonous snake.
“What is that?”
Dana made a show of turning it around to look at the paper attached to the clipboard, then held it back out to him.
“It’s just saying that I came and tried to look at the servers, but everything was peachy, so you don’t need me,” she said. “This way, if anything goes wrong in the next couple days like it has at the other plants, I don’t get fired for not doing my job and causing another plant shutdown. You sign this, and I get out of your hair.”
The man’s eyes were wide again, but he was looking at the page, not her face.
“Maybe you should take a look,” he said. “Just to be sure.”
Dana let her shoulders slump.
“You sure? If everything’s working, I don’t want to bother—”
“It’s no bother at all,” the man said. “And we can’t be too careful. No one wants to have another shutdown.”
He led her over to a cube at the back of the room.
“This work?” he asked.
Dana nodded and set her satchel on the desk, then grabbed her laptop and opened it up as well.
“How long do you need?” he asked.
“Shouldn’t be long,” she said. “I’ll come get you when I’m done.”
She sat, turning her back to him in apparent dismissal, but she could hear him shifting behind her. Eventually, he sighed and left her in the cube.
Dana glanced over her shoulder to double-check he was gone before opening the script Haley had given her.
Rogue landed in a crouch, her hand going to the cobblestones to steady her balance. The hairs on her arm stood straight out, and she could practically feel the static crackling over her skin.
The courtyard was neat and clean. People walked from the buildings that stood against the tall walls, and a church with six massive steeples jutting out at angles that would not have been architecturally possible in a world bound by the laws of physics. Pigeons with tiny white parchment rolls flew in and out of each of the steeples in a constant stream.
Rogue crossed the courtyard and up four worn, stone stairs. The church door was massive, easily ten feet tall and built of solid looking dark wood with several strips of iron holding the large beams together. It looked at odds with the aesthetic of the stone facade, but then she glanced up at the impossible spires. Shaking her head, she grasped a metal ring as wide as her head. She tried to pull the door open, but it didn’t budge. Putting one foot on the wall next to the door, she yanked with all her might.
Still, the door didn’t move.
Rogue stepped back and tapped the Bluetooth in her ear.
“Yeah?” Bonnie said.
“They changed the password on this too,” Rogue said.
“I was afraid of that,” Bonnie said. “Check and see if they got my back door.”
Rogue walked around the side of the church. She tried to avoid looking at the steeples and giving herself a headache.
She got to the back wall of the church and laughed. There was a small door, barely bigger than a doggy door, cut into the stone. It was the same dark wood with bands of black iron as the front door, but it was already cracked open.
“We’re good,” she said.
“Hurry, you’ve only got twenty minutes before it checks in.”
Rogue knelt next to the miniature door. It swung out on silent hinges when she touched it.
“Couldn’t have made this easy, could you?” she grunted as she started wiggling through.
“Focus,” Bonnie said.
“I can multitask.”
Her eyes slowly adjusted to the small, claustrophobic tunnel as she army-crawled along. Her elbows stung each time she went too quickly and scraped against the rough stone. She twisted around turns and felt the floor gently sloping up. Occasionally, the tunnel would be illuminated by orange light spilling in from a small cut out, and open enough for her to get on her hands and knees. When she looked through the cutouts, she could see people meeting around circular tables or hunched over desks scribbling on small bits of paper. Rogue tried to crawl faster with each one she passed but quickly ran out of breath from the effort.
“Ten minutes,” Bonnie said. “You close?”
“Feels like it,” Rogue panted. “How big is this thing?”
“It is their main kiosk control server . . .”
Rogue grunted as her knee hit another outcropping. She continued crawling, the cutouts and windows passing faster and faster as she pushed on.
“Five minutes.”
Rogue pushed her hands and feet faster. She growled in pain as her shoulder hit another bit of stone jutting out, and it exploded in a cloud of dust.
Then she turned a corner and saw a white light at the end of the tunnel.
“Am I supposed to go toward the light?”
“What?” Bonnie said.
“Never mind,” Rogue said.
“Two minutes.”
Rogue burst out of the tunnel and into the brilliant sunlight. Before her eyes adjusted, she felt the rough stone beneath her palms and knees give way to polished tile. Birds hooted and chirped around her, and when Rogue pushed herself up, she felt something squish under her fingers. She
quickly wiped her hand on the back of her flight suit before her vision was clear enough to see what she’d touched.
The inside of the steeple was filled with rows and rows of pigeon coops. Two men moved down the rows, tying tiny rolled papers to their legs before throwing the birds off the side.
“How am I supposed to find it?” Rogue asked.
“See any that look different?”
Rogue looked around the room, examining the pigeons in more detail. They came in different sizes, from as large as Rogue’s head to small enough to fit in her palm, but they all had slate gray feathers on their bodies and wings and a shimmery green neck and head.
Rogue spun slowly, scanning the racks of pigeons. Most peered at her with small black eyes, hooted at her, then turned as one of the men approached with a bit of cracker and a rolled paper.
“Should be making the call in thirty seconds,” Bonnie said.
A flash of red caught Rogue’s eye. She looked over, and instead of another pair of black eyes, two dots of glowing red stared at her. The bird cocked its head but stayed silent.
One of the men started walking toward the bird with red eyes, and Rogue leaped in front of him.
“Found it,” Rogue said. “Uploading new file.”
“No time,” Bonnie yelled. “Just delete it.”
Rogue glanced down at the bird, which was still staring up at her with its creepy red eyes.
Rogue felt a tap on her shoulder and looked back to see one of the men standing with a rolled parchment.
“File error,” he said in a robotic voice. “One attempt remaining before administrator notification.”
“Sorry little fella,” Rogue said, reaching into the coop.
Chapter Thirty-Two
For being a hostage, Josef couldn’t argue with the accommodations. The condo he was sharing with Gil was spacious enough, though he was forced to share a bathroom with the older man. Josef had no idea where they were, thanks to the hood they’d thrown over his head during the nearly hourlong ride back from the restaurant, but it didn’t really matter since Vlad or one of his cronies brought take-out every few hours. They were careful to make sure there were no logos or identifying marks on the containers, but given the frequency and quality of the Chinese food, he guessed they were somewhat near Penn Quarter.
His biggest gripe was that they still hadn’t given him his phone back. He’d wiped it before coming to the restaurant, but it would have still been comforting to have it with him.
They didn’t trust him enough to let him on the Web, so he’d spent the last few days writing scripts for Gil.
Midway through day three of his gilded-cage imprisonment, he finally got stir crazy enough to try something stupid. Fortunately, Vlad showed up before he could.
The imposing Russian dropped a bag of fried food on the kitchen counter.
“Congratulations,” he said. “Gil tells me that he hasn’t found anything in the code.”
“Told you,” Josef said. “If you’ll just hand over that briefcase, I’ll be out of here.” He dug into the plastic bag and pulled out a fried chicken leg. “After I finish this though.”
“You could,” Vlad said. He handed a plate to Gil. “Or you could stay, and I’ll double your payout.”
Josef shook his head. “I’ve been a prisoner in this place for the last week,” he said.
“Consider that your pledgeship,” Gil said. “You really going to quit now that the hard part is behind you?”
“I didn’t want to be a pledge in the first place,” Josef snapped.
“You don’t have to physically stay here,” Vlad said. “But Gil and I could use someone with your skills. And like I said, you’ll be compensated for your efforts.”
Josef looked back and forth between the two men.
“Triple,” he said. “And more mashed potatoes.”
Stryker walked into the space station’s main hangar, the plates of his power armor clinking together softly as he moved. A variety of ships floated in the low gravity, and mechanics and pilots yelled back and forth. There was a loud bang from a ship across the hangar, and a pair of aliens with green skin and stalks that ended with glassy eyeballs yelled in a language Stryker didn’t understand as thick black smoke started pouring from vents on top of the craft.
He made his way to one that looked like it’d been several pieces that had all been welded together by a drunk monkey. The ramp at the back was lowered, and he made his way into the belly of the ship.
Bonnie, Rogue, and Clyde were huddled at the back of the cargo hold. The sides of the ship were stained with rust and covered with different colored metal patches.
“You guys pick the nicest places,” Stryker said as he joined the others. He sat on one of the dozen crates scattered around the hold, and the wood creaked under his weight.
“We were starting to get worried,” Bonnie said. “Everything OK?”
Stryker nodded. “They asked me to re-up,” he said. “Double the payday.”
Rogue laughed, but Bonnie and Clyde glanced at one another uncertainty.
“You already said yes?” Bonnie said.
“Couldn’t turn that kind of money down,” Stryker said.
“You just signed up for whatever the most dangerous gang in the world wants you to do?” Bonnie said. “Without asking us? Are you insane?”
“We needed a way in,” Stryker shot back. “Now we’ll know exactly what they’re doing, and I’m going to get paid for it.”
“And what happens if they realize that you’re not the elite hacker that they think you are?” Bonnie said. “You do remember who actually got that code, right?”
“I did just as much as you did,” he said. “And I’m the one that walked into that restaurant. I’ve got the balls to get in when you were too scared to do anything but sit back and hope things worked out.”
“You also were taken hostage,” Clyde pointed out.
“And now I’m not,” Stryker said. “I’ve got the right to make some decisions on my own.”
“You’re only alive thanks to her,” Bonnie said nodding to Rogue. “I’m not saying that you’re not good, but we don’t operate in a vacuum. If you get into it and don’t know how to do something, we won’t be able to help you.”
“I’ll figure it out,” he said. “And I’m not going to be with them the whole time, so you can help me if I really need it. Now you can’t leave me on the B team.”
Bonnie pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath.
“Not much to do about it now,” she said. “May as well take advantage of our new trojan.”
“What do you have in mind?” Rogue asked.
“We can’t map the mob like we did last time,” Bonnie said. “But if he’s going to be physically with them, I’m sure we can figure out where the DS boys need to hit them.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Josef hadn’t expected to meet a hardened gangster over coffee, but as he watched the barista with more tattoos and piercings than most of the members of DS-13 mix cappuccinos and espressos, he wasn’t sure if he was surprised.
The shop itself was a narrow hallway with the bar along one side, but then opened up at the back into a larger sitting area with cracked leather couches and small wooden booths built into the walls. Light streamed in from the front windows, and the glass door threw slivers of golden morning light through the shop each time a customer came or went.
Josef sipped on a cup of black coffee at one of the tables at the back. It wasn’t as strong as the real stuff his dad made, but it was good enough to get the job done. The thick aroma reminded him of the mornings spent at sea, pouring over maps and charts with brown stains where the waves had punished one of the crew members for overfilling their ceramic mugs.
“Wish I had someone that looked at me like that.”
Josef snapped out of his reverie and looked up as Vlad slid into the booth across from him. The Volkag wore a jacket heavier than the warm weather warranted, and a bal
l cap pulled down over his blond hair.
Gil was right behind him, but instead of sitting next to the Russian, he poked Josef’s shoulder.
Josef raised the cup and took a gulp. It was still too hot, and he felt his taste buds dying as the coffee scalded his tongue, but he tried to keep his face impassive.
Gil poked him again. Josef glared at him but scooted over.
Vlad snorted in amusement and reached into his jacket.
“Glad to see you too getting along,” he said. Then he held out a folded slip of newspaper.
Josef took the clipping and started to unfold it.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Your first job as an independent consultant,” Vlad said. “One of our competitors is going to be doing something very naughty, and we want you to stop them.”
Josef stared down at the story in his hands and frowned. There was a grainy picture of a balding businessman with a pair of giant scissors cutting a ribbon. The headline of the piece said “New Plant Could Create Three Thousand Jobs and Sixty Thousand Cars in the First Year.”
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Stop them from getting the plant fully up and running.”
Josef’s eyes went wide.
“You want me to blow up a car manufacturing plant?” he asked.
“I said stop it from operating efficiently,” Vlad said. “Not destroy it.”
“Same thing,” Josef said.
“Maybe I should be more clear,” Vlad said. “I want you to keep it from opening this year.”
“Why?”
“That’s above your pay grade.”
“There’s no way,” he said.
“There’s always a way,” Gil said. “You just have to get creative.”
“This isn’t what I do,” Josef said. “I’m not a terrorist.”
“Why do they always go for the most violent option?” Vlad asked Gil.
The other man shrugged. “Probably all the video games,” he replied. “Kids just fill their minds with explosions and guns.”
Trojan Page 19