“Thank you, Mr. Walker,” Dad mumbles.
“Don’t ever try to steal from me again.”
“Of course not, Mr. Walker,” Dad mumbles.
Walker releases his tie and pushes Dad back a step. “Now. I have guests coming. My butler will you show you out.”
“Thank you, Mr. Walker,” Dad repeats.
I glance longingly at the view before snapping my briefcase closed. We head back toward the elevators. Which means we’re almost at the moment of truth.
The first hurdle was to get inside the apartment. The next hurdle is to stay.
We take it slowly.
“I’m sorry that happened,” I whisper. I want to call him “Dad.” My feelings about my dad have been all over the board today. A minute before I wanted to use him as a punching bag for letting so much money slip through his fingers while being a miser with me. But then to watch Walker show his dominance over him and make him grovel…at that moment, he was just my dad again. And some bully was beating him up.
“Sorry?” he asks, apparently not fully understanding what I mean. I can’t tell if he’s being deliberately obtuse or if he’s staying in character—a defendant talking to his lawyer. “I think we have a good chance of him agreeing to it, don’t you?”
“I do,” I answer.
We get to the end of the hallway and I linger again at the window. The sun is fully gone now and the lights of New York look magnificent.
“This way, if you please,” the butler says, waiting for us.
I nod with a small smile in apology. He gives me my phone back and I slip it into my pocket. When my hand comes out, it’s palming what I think of as a small flask. It’s thin, like five or six credit cards pressed together, and it’s made of an even thinner plastic, the kind of plastic I could tear apart if I wanted to (and I do want to). It doesn’t have much in it. But I don’t need much.
My heart is racing. One hundred and eleven floors below us, James and Lara-B should be in position, but I can’t think of them right now. I have a job to do.
The elevator door opens. It feels as if it’s sliding in slow motion. Finally it’s all the way open and we step in. There’s not even time to count to one. The moment we’re both on the elevator, all the lights go out.
The butler lets out a cry of surprise, and so does my dad—even though he’s expecting it, we decided one of us needed to sound surprised as well. That’s his job.
Because I have mine.
In the pitch black of the darkened elevator, with no one watching, I squeeze the flask into a ball, tearing the fine plastic and letting out its contents, and then I slam it against the wall of the elevator.
“What’s that?” the butler asks a second later. “Do you smell smoke?”
Twenty-Two
When the power comes on fifteen or twenty seconds later, the lights reveal a confused scene. Smoke is pouring out of the elevator. I’m on the marble floor of the elevator, coughing madly (and I’m not faking either—I inhaled way too much smoke), and Dad is kneeling over me. The table that I had set my phone on earlier was knocked over and the butler is righting it.
“It was a blackout!” he exclaims, his eyes still focused on the skyline. “The whole city went dark!”
It really was a blackout. Lara-B found vulnerabilities in the electrical grid at points far enough removed that Gene shouldn’t be able to figure out it was an act of sabotage. If she had just taken out the building on its own, it would have spooked Keir and Gene. So we had to go big. Like, all of Manhattan big.
How’s that for an imagination, tech bros?
Meanwhile, at ground level, if all has gone as planned, Lara-B and James were able to use the blackout to sneak into the covered loading dock. With so much else to worry about, we think that the security won’t notice the back end of a semitruck on their cameras.
“Help me get her out of the elevator, for Christ’s sake!” Dad hollers.
That startles the butler into action. He and my dad drag me out of the elevator.
“It’s not safe in there,” my dad gasps. “Three seconds later and blackout would have hit while we were moving.”
“What’s going on?” Walker asks, rushing into the hallway.
“The blackout must have triggered an electrical fire in the elevator,” the butler says (thankfully, so Dad doesn’t have to suggest a similar idea).
Before anyone can say anything more, foam shoots out of the ceiling and coats the walls and floors of the hallway and the elevator.
Walker rushes backward to get away from the foam, but by the time it stops spraying a few seconds later, he’s covered in it. But at least the smoke has stopped.
Walker curses under his breath and looks at us. “Get them out of here and get this cleaned up before Keir gets here,” he tells the butler.
“She needs medical attention, Mr. Walker!” my dad exclaims.
“And the elevator’s not safe,” the butler says.
“Whatever,” Walker says. “Henry, call down to the front desk and tell them that the kid should use the freight elevator. And have them call for an ambulance. But get these two to the lobby. I don’t want the kid seeing anyone else here. I’m going to change.”
Walker’s already gone by the time he finishes talking.
“I’m fine,” I gasp. “I don’t need an ambulance.”
“Nonsense. You sound terrible,” Dad says. “Can you call for help?” he asks the butler, who I guess is named Henry.
“Just give me a few minutes to catch my breath. Do you have”—cough cough cough—“a glass of water?” I ask.
Henry looks in the direction where Walker went, evidentially weighing how quickly he needs to implement his boss’s orders. His humanity must win out, though, because he says, “Don’t try to get up yet. I’ll call for an ambulance and get you a glass.” He shuffles away.
I check my watch again. After all that, it’s 8:02. Keir is likely somewhere in the lobby. We’re so close. After I clear the smoke from my lungs, I work to calm my body and get my heart rate down.
“Take it easy,” Dad says quietly. He can see I’m getting revved up too.
I nod and try breathing exercises. I thought I would be faking this part, but I’m definitely not.
Henry returns with a glass of water, saying, “Here you go, miss.” He and my dad help me sit up so I can drink from it.
I rest for a few moments.
“Do you need a paramedic drone to come up to get you?” Henry asks.
“No, thank you,” I say. “That’s very kind. I’ll meet it down in the lobby. But do you mind if I use a bathroom real quick? I must look terrible.”
And I must, because neither of them disagree, though Henry looks like the idea worries him. “Mr. Walker has a very important guest coming,” he says. “And it wouldn’t do to have him see you both.”
“I can hide out in there until you give me the all clear,” I suggest. “Then we can sneak out.”
Henry nods. “Would it be terribly inappropriate to ask if you, Mr. Davis, would join her in there? I know that’s a little awkward but—”
“No, of course,” Dad says.
“I just want to clean myself off,” I say. “It’s fine.”
“We’ll manage. Thank you for your help. Truly,” Dad adds. We’re probably rambling because we’re so excited this phase worked. We literally blacked out a city just so we could have a reason to stay.
Henry leads us to a bathroom near the elevator, recessed off of the hallway and farther toward the center of the building. It’s exactly where it was on the blueprints, so there’s a weird sense of familiarity I have seeing it there. We go inside and the butler closes the door. As soon as I hear the footsteps fade away, I crack it open so we both can hear.
We don’t hear anything for the next few minutes, and I use the time to actually clean up my face from the smoke. I also take the opportunity to unload the special adapter that Lara-B designed and T-Six created. It’s ten feet long and I coil it a c
ouple times around my shoulder. Once there, I get out the two sleeves of punch cards. I don’t know how much time I’m going to have, but we’ve reached the moment of truth. I fill the silence by rehearsing the rest of the plan over and over.
Get to the Analytical Engine.
Use the only machine in the place that Gene can’t hack to block him from taking over the rest of the building’s security systems.
Wrestle the laptop away from Keir.
Get Gene into the mobile Faraday cage.
Then get both Gene and the Analytical Engine into the freight elevator, where it will whisk us down to where James and Lara-B are waiting.
I go over it again and again as we wait in tense silence.
Finally there are footsteps. “Welcome, Mr. Irons. Right this way,” Henry says.
“Thank you,” Keir answers. There’s no possible way he can see me but just hearing his voice makes me back up from the crack in the door. “Is everything ok?” he asks.
“Perfectly. The blackout seems to have shorted something out in the main elevator so we’re lucky you weren’t in it at the time. We’re all safe, but thank you for your concern.” By the time he finishes, I can barely hear him. He must be in the main room that overlooks the park.
I nod to my dad and he nods back. Good luck, he mouths. I slip out of the bathroom and sneak closer to the corner of the hallway. I can hear a little better again.
“Keir! There you are!” Walker exclaims. “So good to see you again! It’s been years. The last time I saw you you were about this big. Just a kid.”
Of course I can’t see them, so I don’t know how big he means. I sneak closer to the corner.
“I’m twenty now,” Keir answers.
“A man already!” Walker says. “Well, a man for at least a couple years now, I’ll bet. You seem like the kind to do ok with the ladies.” Jeez. This guy is hard to take when he’s putting on the charm. “And is this it? In the big case? Let’s see what you’ve brought for me… Actually, not here. I have a spot ready to go for it…yep. Right here. I used to have Michelangelo here, but I decided to put that away for a while. I was getting bored of it. But this! This is a true treasure.”
There’s some noise—what I interpret as them lifting the Analytical Engine onto the pedestal, because it’s a combination of some bangs, grunts, and Walker telling him to open it up.
Walker whistles. “Would you look at that,” he says in wonder. “A thing of beauty. Plus I like its…how should I say it…its provenance. You really stole this from your mom?”
“Yes,” Keir answers. “I did.” He sounds formal. Like he’s playing grown-up. Is he trying to impress Orrin Walker for some reason? Is he nervous?
“I want to hear that story. I mean, I’ll never tell a living soul, you can count on that. But I want to hear it. From the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”
“Actually, Mr. Walker, do you have the money?” Keir asks.
“Right to business,” Walker laughs. “I like your style, kid. A lot like me, in fact. It’s that tenacity that made me my first billion.”
“I’d like to get moving.”
“A hot date, huh? I guess it is a Saturday night in New York City. And with the money you’re about to have, you can buy a great night on the town, amiright? Just don’t spend it all in one place!” Walker laughs. “I have a debit card with your name on it. It’s tied to an account with forty million in cash.”
“How do I access the money?”
“The PIN’s on the back.”
“Did you use a Sharpie?”
“Is there a problem? You got your money.”
“It’s just…terribly insecure, Mr. Walker,” Keir says.
“Well, then don’t lose it, kid.”
“How do I know the money’s actually there? That it’s actually mine?”
“You think I’m going to cheat you?” Walker growls. “What do I care about forty mil? Look, this way it’s easy to get across a border, you know? A lot lighter than a suitcase full of cash like in the movies.”
“Ok,” Keir says quietly.
Walker suddenly changes his tone and laughs. “But I don’t want to let you out of here too fast. We need a celebratory drink. You can tell me the story of how you stole it while we do that. And then someone needs to show me how this contraption works! I’m guessing it’s not the kind of thing I can just Google, yeah?”
“Actually you could, it’s very well documented starting from the eighteen—”
“Well, I’d much rather get it from you. I’m not from the YouTube generation, you know? Sound good? Capisce?”
Capisce. Like in an old gangster movie. It’s said with a laugh, like he knows he’s being old-fashioned when he says it. It makes me I realize I’ve heard my dad say that word, and in the exact same way. Has my dad picked up mannerisms from his boss over the years? The way Walker calls Keir “kid” isn’t too far off from the way my dad calls me “sport.” Maybe this is where he picked it up from. Idolizing his wealthy boss, right down to how he spoke.
It makes me shudder. I feel like today is the real-world uncensored version of Take Your Daughter to Work Day. When my dad brought me as a kid, I was so excited to see the big desks, fancy computers, and the amazing cafeteria. This time, all I can see is the moneygrubbing, the ladder climbing, the dumb corporate-speak, and the passive-aggressive (and at times not-so-passive-aggressive) bullying.
This last half hour has given me a new insight into my dad and I’m not sure how to feel about it. Mostly it makes me sad.
There are receding footsteps again and I refocus. Walker is taking Keir into the living room. I slip quietly behind them and into the room that showcases the Analytical Engine. But there are footsteps again and I press against the wall next to the door. They pass and I realize it’s Henry coming to get me and Dad.
I grimace and listen. In the distance, I hear a knock. A light tap, barely audible from where I am. I can’t hear what my dad says but Henry says, “All right, five more minutes.”
He returns, passing by the showroom that I’m hiding out in.
So that’s what I have. Five minutes. I think it will be enough.
I quickly unsling the adapter from my shoulder. I fit one end over the output of the Analytical Engine. It’s not built for this, but Lara-B designed something that would connect the machine to a more standard analog-to-digital converter. Then we have an adapter that converts that to something that can plug into an Ethernet jack. But the blueprints didn’t show that there were any Ethernet ports in the room, so the Ethernet cable has a final adapter that converts it a regular 120-volt wall socket. Because Orrin Walker is a man of the future and all his outlets are smart outlets. The Internet of Things! The wave of the future!
And that’s exactly what I’m exploiting.
I plug in the other side of the cable to the wall. Through the most hilarious series of adapters ever devised, I’ve connected the Analytical Engine to the house grid. From the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.
Now the final step. The short program will—what else?—exploit the same bug in the house computer that I’ve exploited twice before. (He who is good with a hammer thinks everything is a nail, and she who is good with authentication security thinks everything is a set of user permissions waiting to be exploited. I mean, it doesn’t roll off the tongue, but same diff.)
I open the first sleeve of cards and begin loading them into the machine’s input tray.
This first sleeve will give control of the house AI to the Analytical Engine. The same thing I did resetting Lara-B’s and Gene’s administration. And since the connection to the Analytical Engine from the wall socket is only one-way, Gene would have to write his own punch card program, print it, and have Keir load it in to take the house back over. So without the building’s security system to do his bidding, Gene should effectively be powerless. He’ll be just a laptop. A genie trapped in a laptop instead of a lamp.
The first sleeve is ready to go. I start cranking the
wheel to get the engine moving. A series of clicks and whirs begin, but I can’t worry about the noise. I keep cranking. Like an old-fashioned watch, the cranking can only move the computer at a regulated rate, so I can’t overdo this.
The cards are whooshing out of the tray and into the machine where they are read and understood by the Analytical Engine before being dispensed into another tray.
The cards are almost all the way through and the Engine is chugging along exactly how it’s supposed to. I bend and get the second box ready. This is the box that will tell all the computers in the house to stand down. Because even if I can successfully keep Gene from taking control of the building computer, the security system still has regular marching orders. I need them turned off to make our escape.
The first box is done. I put my hand on the crank to begin the second program sequence. That’s when I hear a voice.
Gene’s voice.
“Keir,” he says, “pardon me for interrupting, but I just lost access to the house security system and I can’t reestablish it. But right before I lost control, it registered DNA on a skin particle that floated into the air filters. I’ve analyzed it and found it matches the DNA of Penny Davis that I acquired at your place. I believe she’s trying to steal the Analytical Engine as we speak.”
I’m one box into my code. But one box isn’t enough.
I am so dead.
Twenty-Three
There’s a lot that happens over the next couple of minutes. Keir is suddenly in the showroom with me. He rounds the corner and almost runs into me, with my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. It’s ready for another crank of the Analytical Engine. So it takes me a moment to realize he has gun in his hand. He looks rattled and scared enough that I think he just might use it.
“Out,” he demands.
Within a few seconds, he’s got me corralled into a corner of the living room. And a few seconds after that the butler Henry pushes my dad into the room and orders him next to me. Henry had seemed like your basic snooty Jeeves, but the way he manhandles my dad as he pushes him makes me realize that he’s not screwing around.
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