The Passionate Mistake

by Amelia Hart

  She’d persist with the firewalls. Surely they couldn’t be impenetrable? No system was. She just needed to keep at it and be patient; if that was at all possible.

  Chapter Three

  “Have you located the files for the data mining software?”

  Cathy made a moue of distaste, glad her father couldn’t see her down the phone. “No, I haven’t. And I’m not looking for it, either. I already told you I don’t want our company to be associated with that sort of thing.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers. That’s the most lucrative option.”

  She shifted on the park bench, hot in the glare of the sun, tilting her tablet to a better angle to combat the light. “Give me more time to look around. I’ll find something useful.”

  “Do you have a good level of clearance?”

  “Enough.” She doodled absently on the screen, painting watercolour-effect swirls across the pseudo journal page. “I can probably hack through the rest of the way. Most of the firewalls are external.”

  “Most of them? How many are there?”

  “Enough. Not just the Hammel Protection package. They’ve developed some variants they haven’t released to the public. It’s taking longer than I thought.” She switched virtual pens and started to draw segments on the swirls, turning them into worms, like the mental image she got when she sent one of her own worms burrowing into a system.

  “You’ll get it, there’s a good girl. Staying under the radar?”

  “I’ve been careful. It’s hard not to draw attention. The boss is pretty sharp.”

  “Don’t get caught. I don’t want you to get into any trouble.”

  She felt a small glow of pleasure at his ‘good girl’ and his concern for her. “I’ll be fine. No one ever catches me. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t get cocky. This isn’t some game or competition. This is the real world. We’re depending on you.”

  Her mouth tightened, the glow gone as the almost habitual note of scornful reproach crept back into his voice. She doubted he even heard it in himself. He had such a way of making her feel like an inept child. “I know. Like I said, I’m being careful.”

  “And stay away from your boss. I know you. You’re not used to keeping secrets. You’ll get his attention, talking back, acting smart. You’ll give yourself away.”

  “I said don’t worry. I’ve totally got this.”

  He sighed heavily. “You’re making me real proud of you, my girl. You’re a smart one.” She knew he was impressed by the way she had stepped up to do this task for Techdos. He had said it more than once now: that he was proud of her cleverness. Rare words, from him; rare as hens’ teeth. It made her hesitant to sound like she was reneging, but . . .

  “Dad, can’t we have a go with me designing what you want? I can do it. We don’t have to go through this whole rigmarole.” The more she lived these lies, the more the deceit grated on her. By nature she was truthful, uncompromisingly so. How could you be the absolute best if you couldn’t face the truth of your own actions, your own flaws? She had mercilessly written off liars in the past. Being one herself was like wearing a set of clothes that itched and bound her all over.

  “I thought you said you liked a challenge?” His tone was impatience verging on anger, a challenge in itself.

  “I did. I do. But . . . I’d far prefer the challenge of developing and selling my own work. Not someone else’s.”

  “Kate, I don’t want to go through this again. This is pure selfishness. The future of the company is at stake. That means your family’s future. Does that mean nothing to you? We can’t risk that future on some half-baked piece of software from a half-baked programmer.”

  “Dad, I’m good. I’m really, really good. It wouldn’t be half-baked.”

  “No. You just do things my way.” He spoke with finality, the subject closed. She pinched up her mouth at the dismissal, though she didn’t argue further. For there was also the familiar feeling of guilt rising along with his accusation of selfishness. It was selfish, that she couldn’t willingly make this sacrifice when he had made so many to raise her and her siblings, alone. How could she ever equal that? She couldn’t. So she suppressed the anger, shunted it aside, listened to him say: “Find us something almost finished. Something we can use. Time is critical. We need it yesterday.”

  “I still think they’ll recognize it,” came out on a defeated mumble that sounded like a teenager speaking, even to her ears. But that didn’t seem to raise dad’s ire the way confrontation did. He slotted back into wheedling.

  “Dozens of different companies work on similar projects at the same time. That’s the name of the game. It’s a race. They know that. If they can’t get their product to market fast enough they miss out. You just choose something well designed and generic, and keep your head down so no one thinks of you when our one pops up.”

  “Someone could recognize me once I’m back with our company.”

  “I doubt it. You’ll be back at uni finishing your degree for the next two years. By the time you’re done everyone will have moved on. Forgotten all about it.”

  She hesitated, then uncharacteristically decided to try for a second time to get him to reconsider. “Dad, doesn’t this feel kind of . . . crooked to you? I’m not sure I like-”

  “For God’s sake!” he barked. “When the backs of your family are to the wall, there’s no room to be precious. This is about survival. It’s us against the world. We need you to do this for us. For all of us. You think you’re going to hurt that big company? Of course not. This is a fleabite to them. It’s nothing. They’ll shrug it off. A big company like that has pockets so deep you can’t even imagine it. So you make a tiny dent in the profit margins and some multi-national CEO somewhere can’t afford to upgrade his super-yacht this month. No one will care. But to us, to your family, this means everything, Kate. Everything.”

  She squirmed on the park bench, feeling the tension in her spine rise up into her head and tighten like a vice around her temples. The throbbing headache made her nauseous.

  “Kate?”

  “Yeah, dad. I hear you.”

  “Now you do as you’re told. That’s a good girl. Good girl. We’re counting on you. All of us. Don’t let us down.”

  “No dad. I won’t.”

  “That’s my good girl. Bye now.”

  “Bye, dad.” She pushed the button to disconnect, then tried massaging the back of her neck, trying to relieve the tightness. The muscles were fiercely knotted under her fingers and the pain made her wince.

  Putting aside phone, satchel and sunhat she stood and ran ferociously on the spot for a minute, lifting her knees high, then moved through a sequence of powerful lunges and stretches, well used to dealing with this kind of muscle stress. She was often tied up in knots. Dad said it was the sign of a fighter, a scrapper, just like him. Her whole body was ready for action.

  Honestly she’d been having this sort of tension a lot lately. And it didn’t feel like readiness. It just felt painful and wearying. Everything winding up tighter and tighter until there was nowhere left to move.

  She ignored the curious stares of passersby, finishing her routine in her own time. Let them stare. She didn’t care.

  When she was done she sat again, unwrapping her chicken filled roll and biting into it ferociously. Not that she was hungry. But her lunch break was nearly over. Better to get it over with. Better to get it all over with, and then maybe there’d be a bit more space in her life for . . . well, for something that didn’t leave her quite this strung out.

  Chapter Four

  She couldn’t break through the next layer of protection. She’d been working on it for three days now. It was driving her mad with frustration. She’d started rewriting everyone’s code, just to pass the time. Oh, all improvements. Let’s see anyone complain when their lame piece of half-assed software started turning somersaults. People were looking at their screens in bewilderment.

  Secretly she loved that gob smacked
stare. The wide open eyes, raised brows, gaping mouth; the furtive sideways glance, trying to see if anyone was watching them.

  It wasn’t wise to play around like this. But dammit, neither was throwing a royal tantrum; which was what she really wanted to do. So far she had refrained. Instead, in between designing worms of greater and greater complexity, she fixed every bug in each team’s software and added beautiful curlicues at the corners of all internal documents.

  She completed chores and errands with a ferocious speed and intensity, glared at those who tried to engage her in conversation and hid in various sequestered cubicles the instant she had finished her assigned work, so no one could discover her and give her more to do. Every free moment she was trying to break in.

  To no avail. She was beginning to suspect there was a programmer of greater skill and perhaps even – she hated to admit it – ability, say even, with a wince, intellect – at work here; Or greater knowledge, of course. That was always possible. There were heights as yet unscaled by her; theoretically, at least.

  She started to plan her physical attack, unable to get past fire as an option for evacuating everyone from the IT area at the rear of the ground floor, as well as everywhere else. She played at being the dumb new employee and asked Francine – the designated Fire Warden – to explain the evacuation procedure a couple of times through.

  “What’s the record for clearing the building?”

  “Three minutes, twelve seconds.”

  “Okay, and how about re-entry? How long do they make people stay outside before they’re allowed back in again?

  “That depends on the fire service. As soon as they’ve checked the place over we can go back in.”

  “Is there some way of telling where the alarm was triggered?”

  “I think so. Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s one of those diagrams with a flashing light on it-”

  “An LED.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Anyway it shows where the trigger was.”

  “Thanks. That stuff’s good to know. Wouldn’t want to be running around like a headless chicken if there was an emergency.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. Do you want to know the earthquake procedure too?”

  “Oh no, no that’s fine. One at a time.”

  Francine looked puzzled, but pleased to be the expert, and Cathy escaped to do yet another walk through, carrying a folder clasped to her chest and walking briskly as if on an errand.

  The top floor held the Platform Division’s big, glossy offices, enclosed by massive glass windows and containing ten giant desks with half-a-dozen monitors each, and five smug occupants. Jay had confirmed they were DigiCom’s finest up in their own locked area working on who-knew-what. On the opposite side of the atrium was Mike Summer’s suite with his office and his guardian dragon of a personal assistant, all rigid politeness and tight smiles that didn’t reach her eyes. In the middle, towards the back of the building, were the meeting rooms and the gym.

  Downstairs was all open plan but the twisted shapes of the developers’ workstations gave some concealment around the Datacentre. She went carefully past there once, twice, and a third time a little later, trying to work out who would be able to see her hunched over the screen and the pull-out keyboard that was kept in the Datacentre for direct access to the servers.

  She’d have to work quickly to establish her rootkit. In and out, and examine her findings from a remote location. She had set the official False Fire Alarm Date as Friday, but on Thursday Mike Summers called a whole-company competition. It created a low-level hum of excitement through the building. Even she – disconnected as she was – felt the change, like a variation in temperature or air pressure. For the programmers this meant a chance to show off for the boss. Maybe some choice plum of a prize too, though nothing was named.

  He’d organized them before but they definitely weren’t routine, she found out when she asked Jay – whose continual air of wide-eyed innocence made him an unsuspicious source of information in her eyes. Mike Summers liked to test the mettle of his staff, get them to play against each other and show off their paces. It was fun. It was a challenge. A game and a trial. Jay was excited about the whole thing.

  Cathy rolled her eyes at the idea, cynical and suspicious of motives. This wasn’t profitable. How many thousands of dollars did he waste in paying people to sit around writing programs that would never be sold? It was craziness typical of him, the man who built treehouses and slides so his employees could play at being kids again.

  They gathered in the atrium, beanbags and laptops in hand, a crowd of casually dressed and under-groomed technos. No one had set Cathy a specific task so she hovered on the fringes, curious to see how this would pan out. He might as well waste her wage along with everyone else’s.

  When everyone had settled, Mike stepped out and pointed to the big screen. There was a set of specifications. Nothing too exotic. It could easily be met with a toy algorithm. She thought it would take maybe twenty minutes of work.

  “Design that program. First one complete and running wins the round,” was all he said; short and to the point. There was a gentle pattering noise, like rain striking a roof; the sound of hundreds of fingertips softly, swiftly hitting keys.

  At that moment as she looked around she realized everyone was here. Which meant the Datacentre was isolated. Probably not for long, though.

  She sidled away, her heart beginning to thump, her hand going up to brush against her shirt to check her USB drive was there in its hiding place. Yes. Yes. Now.

  She was right. In this moment no one sat at any of the workstations, and they shielded the atrium – just barely, but it was enough – from sight. Moving quickly she checked first Jay’s then Alex’s work areas, knowing each of them had swipe card access to the IT area and Datacentre. Jay’s workstation was clear but Alex had left all his gear draped around his cave-like workstation. She rifled through his satchel, the coat hanging on his chair, before seeing the corner of the distinctive red card poking out from under a notebook on the desk. Yes!

  She took it, tucking it into her palm, rubbing the edge back and forth, back and forth with the thumb of her other hand as she skirted the treehouse and slide, went through the grove of palm trees and emerged with a final cautious check in every direction including upwards towards the windows of the Platform Division which overlooked the developers area. No one was there either; all in the atrium defending their positions as the best in the company, of course.

  Her fingers shook as she swiped the card. The first time through the machine there was no beep or clunk of the door and when she pushed on the handle she found it still firmly locked. Her heart jumped up to her throat. She tried a second time and this time it registered and the familiar clunk sounded.

  She’d been hearing that sound for three weeks now and snarling internally each time. Now it sang to her, a siren song of success. She went straight to the Datacentre within the IT area, swiping the stolen card again at this second locked door. It registered straight away.

  The place was noisy with the roar of fans and the ventilation system, and much colder than the rest of the air conditioned building so she shivered even in her baggy jeans.

  The USB port was her Mecca, the key sliding in sweetly. As the flashing of the LED began she pulled out the keyboard and switched on the monitor. The few seconds it took to warm up and show the brand name were an eternity. She breathed on her fingers to keep them from stiffening in the cold.

  “Come on, come on,” she muttered softly, her leg jiggling a frantic rhythm. Experimenting, she discovered she could pull the keyboard downwards and sideways at an angle so she could hide halfway concealed by the bank of servers. She knelt and started the search to confirm the rootkit’s ownership of the system. “Yes!” she hissed, finding it burrowed in tight, only showing on her specialized search. No observer would find it. It was designed for sophisticated misdirection. The only way it could be stripped out now without her own insider knowledge was to destroy the motherb
oard. She owned this computer.

  She took a moment more to be sure the subverted computer was networked to all the others. Yes again! Oh, oh thanks be to the universe, it was going to be okay. She was done. The USB drive went back into hiding, the monitor off and the keyboard away and she was out of the IT area in ten heartbeats that pulsed loudly in her ears. She was panting, the adrenaline load almost overwhelming. She thought she might be sick and she willed it sternly away. No time for that now. The swipe card went back to its place under the notebook on Alex’s desk and she found a computer in the developers’ area no one had claimed today and started it up. It was dangerous to check from within the building if anyone was watching the system, but no one had reason to be suspicious. This once – just this once – she would take the chance.

  She logged into the online server and found the Datacentre’s computer had called in as directed. She followed the link straight back, taking over all the computers on the network. She was grinning madly, feeling the heated flush of victory charging through her.

  The library of source code was hers. Was . . .

  She searched again.

  These were the production servers. They must have the entire library on them. It had to be there.

  She searched a third time.

  It wasn’t.

  She pressed a clenched fist to her mouth so she wouldn’t scream aloud in rage and despair.

  Where was it? If not here, where could it possibly be?

  She leaned far back in her chair, her fingers burrowing deep into her hair, twisting the strands in their confining pigtails until her scalp ached. She looked upwards, straight into the Platform Division’s empty offices.