The Last Hack

by Christopher Brookmyre

  If I was being completely honest with Jack, if I was being completely honest with myself, I would give him the word to abort. I’m not sure I can handle this. That on its own ought to be reason to bail, but the bitch of it is, I’m not sure I can’t handle this either, and I only have one shot. I’d say I’m gambling with both our fates, but the selfish part is that I’m actually only gambling with his. Whether I get caught in the act or I abandon the attempt, I am equally fucked. My only safe way out of this is via a result, so I have no option but to gamble with the stake I’ve got.

  As soon as Aaron gave me a PIN, I logged into Matthew Coleridge’s account, allowing me high-level access to Synergis’s security systems. In case there were any session-time limits, the first thing I did was disable the 2FA on both his and Jane Dunwoodie’s accounts. I could have disabled it for the whole show, but I don’t want anybody logging in from home then reporting it up the line that the system didn’t ask for a PIN.

  Next I navigated my way through the building’s alarm systems, which was where I first realised the waters were getting deeper than I might be ready for. When I tried to alter the settings, I got hit with a fresh password request, and Coleridge, like a good security chief, wasn’t using the same one for everything.

  I didn’t lie to Jack. The good news is that all the Synergis alarms and sensors are currently deactivated: the vault, the server room, all restricted areas and, indeed, non-restricted areas too.

  The bad news is that this had nothing to do with me.

  They were like that when I got there, and I suspect it’s not that they have been deactivated, but that they haven’t been set yet. It could be that they don’t get set until a certain time of night, which is worrying because it means we might be up against a clock we can’t see. Or it could be that Aaron in Security hasn’t set them yet because there are still people working elsewhere in the building.

  Oh Jesus.

  My mind flashes back to my conversation with Aaron.

  I thought there was still somebody left up there in Synergis but I guess not.

  At the time I didn’t twig because I was so focused on getting him to give me his PIN.

  Something cold starts trickling through me. I mute the audio feed to Jack and pick up one of my mobiles, the one set to spoof Cheryl Hayes’s home number.

  ‘Hello, Tricorn House.’

  ‘Aaron, hello. It’s Cheryl again.’

  ‘Is everything okay with that PIN?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m ploughing through this stuff now. With a fair wind I might get to my bed by about one.’

  ‘Harsh.’

  ‘Innit, though. The thing is, when I called, you said you thought there might be somebody still up there in Synergis. It would be really useful if there was someone on-site who could check a couple of things for me.’

  ‘Yeah, but there wasn’t, otherwise the call wouldn’t have come through to me.’

  ‘I know, but I thought: what if there is someone in there but they were away at the loo or something when I rang? Could you check the system to see if there’s anybody who hasn’t swiped out yet tonight?’

  ‘Of course, sure.’

  I hear the gentle tapping of the keyboard. Sounds like he’s a one-finger typist, and the speed of his technique isn’t doing my heart any favours.

  ‘Hello, Cheryl?’

  ‘Yeah, still here.’

  ‘Looks like you’re in luck. According to the computer, Mr Cruz is still in the building.’

  MIXED MESSAGES

  Parlabane fears he’s taken a wrong turn. He knows where he is relative to the street outside, but the corridor layout isn’t an easily navigable grid, and sections of it are close to identical: desks, cubicles, computers, whiteboards.

  He approaches the next set of doors and waves his card at the sensor, an electronic talisman charming an invisible sentinel. It’s so quiet that he can hear the mechanism of the lock release, the silence making him all the more conscious of the sound of his own movements.

  He pushes the door open and steps into the darkness beyond, listening for the faint click and buzz that heralds the motion-activated lighting. In the fraction of a second before it engages, he is sure he sees light spilling from interior windows on the left of the passageway. He stops dead again, looking for somewhere to hide. There is an open area to the right, a cubicle farm currently in darkness, but that would change should he head there, like an automated spotlight permanently trained on the intruder.

  He listens out for any sound of movement, but hears nothing. The sight of the corridor lights coming on would have attracted the attention of anyone in that office on the left, surely: unless they didn’t notice it from inside somewhere already illuminated.

  He proceeds with the softest tread, crouching as he nears the interior windows before rising himself up on creaking knees to glimpse from the bottom edge of the glass. He sees a meeting room similar to the one he was left to wait in; though rather than one big table, there are six double desks all facing the smart board dominating the wall at one end. There is nobody inside. Maybe the power-saver lighting switch failed, or perhaps the electrics in here are on a different circuit.

  He stands up straight and allows himself to breathe out.

  That’s when he hears footsteps above: sudden, swift and brief, then gone again.

  He is about to speak but Sam beats him to it.

  ‘Jack, we’ve got a complication.’

  ‘No kidding. I just heard somebody moving upstairs.’

  ‘Leo Cruz didn’t swipe out tonight. He’s still inside.’

  ‘Arse. Do you know where? Because if he’s in R&D, then I’m going to have to lay low and wait.’

  ‘I’m trying to get a fix on him, but nothing so far. I don’t think he can be in R&D, though. I haven’t seen a feed from there yet, so I’m assuming it’s in darkness.’

  ‘You’re assuming? Why can’t you take a look, switch to that camera?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake. Tell me when something does work, Barb.’

  And that’s the other thing that isn’t quite bending to my will like I hoped. Coleridge’s login should have given me complete control of the CCTV system, allowing me to display whichever cameras I needed to see on my laptop, and to select which views I wanted Aaron to be looking at. Instead it’s almost the other way around. I have no say over which feeds are live, so I am only able to see what I presume to be the same views as are cycling on Aaron’s four security monitors.

  What’s truly worrying me about this is that it suggests there’s somebody else logged in whose access privileges trump mine.

  I am left waiting and hoping to catch a glimpse of Cruz in order to suss his location. I have to be patient, but I can’t sit staring at the CCTV windows either, as I have other tasks to be getting on with.

  I am simultaneously logged into the system as Jane Dunwoodie, glancing at the CCTV feeds every time the camera switches. I’m starting to recognise most of the views, though I don’t know for sure which ones are inside Synergis and which ones are elsewhere in Tricorn House.

  I wish I had a bigger screen. I have the CCTV feeds lined up in a row along the top, as small as my eyesight allows, and now have two separate windows open via the Dunwoodie account: one to trawl her email and the other to search her files for references to Project RBA.

  I am focusing so intently upon this that I don’t hear the door open. I almost hit the ceiling when I hear Lilly’s voice.

  ‘Sam? What are you doing?’

  She’s standing in the kitchen doorway in her pyjamas, looking distressed. I can tell she hasn’t been to sleep.

  ‘Lilly, you can’t come in here.’

  ‘I’ve got slippers on.’

  I’m thinking, What the hell has that got to do with anything? Then I remember what I told her about the debris on the floor.

  ‘Yes, but it’s still dangerous.’

  She’s staring at the laptop screen. She’s l
ooking hurt, maybe even betrayed.

  ‘You’re watching TV,’ she says, accusingly.

  ‘No, it’s not TV. It’s my computer.’

  ‘Why can’t I watch it?’

  ‘It doesn’t have a DVD player. It’s not as good as yours was.’

  ‘You’re watching TV on it, though.’

  I realise she’s looking at the CCTV feeds.

  I can hear Jack in my headset, asking who I’m talking to. I mute the mic.

  ‘It’s not a show, Lilly. It’s something I have to do. For school,’ I add.

  ‘You said you stopped school. Can I watch what you’re watching?’

  ‘Lilly, you need to go to bed.’

  ‘But I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Well, you won’t sleep if you’re not in bed.’

  ‘I’m scared in my room. What if the burglars come back?’

  In my earpiece, Jack is asking again about the PIN.

  I can’t handle this. I lose it.

  ‘Lilly, just get to your fucking bed.’

  Her face crumples up into tears and she runs off, howling like I haven’t heard her do in years.

  Jesus. I hate myself. I hate my mum. I hate Jack. I hate Zodiac.

  I get up from my chair, intending to go to her room, but then one of the CCTV feeds refreshes, and I find myself staring at it. I’ve seen it a couple of times before and assumed it was somewhere downstairs, but now that it has cycled back around I am seeing a different possibility in light of recent developments.

  ‘Jack, I’m looking at a lobby area outside an office: there’s a secretary’s desk, a sofa and a coffee table.’

  ‘Big modernist painting on the wall that looks like vomit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s Cruz’s office.’

  ‘I can’t see inside the office itself, but the door is ajar and it looks like there’s a light on.’

  ‘Okay. I know where that is. He must have come back downstairs. I can get to R&D without going too close to Cruz’s office, but give me a shout if you see him on the move.’

  ‘You got it.’

  I get back to the Dunwoodie login, still keeping tabs on the CCTV feeds as they change. A new one flashes up each time Jack triggers the lights in a different area. Sometimes he’s right there in the shot, others no more than a shadow moving in the background. Unfortunately I have no sense of where he is in relation to anything else: it’s like something out of one of Lilly’s Loony Tunes DVDs, with him disappearing from one window then popping up in another.

  Happily I am getting more of a feel for the layout of the network. It’s not been my most elegant of hacks, but I am finally homing in on my goal. After running into a dozen dead-ends, I have uncovered a sub-directory on one of the Research and Development servers, tagged ‘R_B_A’, the underscores having foxed my automated search.

  Jackpot. I encounter a huge cache of documents and open a few samples to make sure I’ve definitely found what Zodiac is after. There are blueprints, circuit diagrams, exploded-view drawings of micro-architecture and a bunch of other stuff I could go over for hours without making head nor tail of. I open a video file, hoping to cut to the chase as to what this prototype is, but it just shows Cruz standing in a dark room talking straight to camera, and I don’t have time to watch it through.

  I’m sending the lot to a trusted file storage server based in Finland. This will allow me to access it later without the stolen material ever being stored on my own machine. I always boot my laptop from a memory card that I can swallow or destroy if the feds ever kick down the door, but the Project RBA trove is too big to store on the card, and I can’t afford to be connected to it.

  Except, apparently I’m not sending anything anywhere. The files are restricted by copy protection. I’ll need Jack to do this on-site.

  ‘Jack, are you near a computer?’

  He answers in a quiet tone, a little above a whisper, though there is an echo on his voice, as well as a slight break-up in the signal.

  ‘This is literally the only time since I walked in here when I could answer no to that question. I’m in a stairwell. Why?’

  ‘I need you to find a machine with a USB port. I’ll talk you through it from there.’

  ‘Any news on that PIN?’

  ‘Shit, sorry. I’ve been concentrating on locating the Project RBA files. I’ll get right on it.’

  ‘Only if you’re not too busy. Maybe during the ad break in Come Dine With Me.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, Jack. You really nailed me. I’m loafing about here, watching my big blank space on the wall because the fucking TV got taken by drug dealers, and I’m enjoying the modern-art vibe of having what little stuff my sister and I still own smashed and emptied on the floor by the junkie bastards who ransacked my flat tonight.’

  Jesus, where did that come from? I ask myself. And I told him I had a sister. That was stupid. I’ve been so careful to hide my home life and my family from him.

  There is radio silence for a few seconds, though I can just about hear Jack’s footsteps reverberating in the stairwell.

  ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. Pressure’s getting to me, you know?’

  ‘I know.’

  A few seconds later one of the CCTV windows changes to a new view as Jack trips the lights. I don’t see him at first, then he enters the edge of the frame and sits down at a PC.

  ‘Go to the one on the other side of that cubicle,’ I tell him. ‘That way you won’t be in shot – in case Aaron the security guard is taking an interest.’

  ‘Got you.’

  He takes a seat at a different PC shortly before the view automatically toggles to somewhere else. He’s got latex gloves on now, so he doesn’t leave prints on the keyboard. They’re skin coloured and hard to notice on the screen unless you’re looking at the fine rings around his wrists. I hope Aaron isn’t paying as close attention as I am.

  I go back to trawling Dunwoodie’s emails while he waits for it to boot up. She gets a shit-ton of messages each day, and it’s not apparent from the subject line which one contains the daily vault code. I really hope I’m not going to have to read the text of each one individually, as that could take hours.

  ‘Okay, the machine is up and running and I can navigate the menus, but I don’t have internet access.’

  ‘You need to log in before you can connect to anything.’

  I log out of Coleridge’s account so that Jack can use it to get into the system, then I begin sending him a piece of software I need him to put on a USB memory stick. This will allow him to copy the RBA files direct once he gets inside the server room.

  Jack confirms that the download has started and I go back to the emails. I change the sort filter so that it lists by sender, reckoning that will let me narrow my search.

  At the top of my screen, the feeds refresh again, and I catch a flash of movement in the corner of one window, someone exiting the frame at speed.

  ‘You on your way, then?’ I ask.

  ‘Just about. Blue line shows the transfer still has about half a centimetre to … nope, done.’

  Shit toasters. Jack hasn’t budged, so it wasn’t him.

  I stare avidly at the CCTV feeds, willing them to refresh. The window where I saw movement remains empty. I’m not sure where it is, but I think Jack passed through it a while ago.

  Finally one of the windows shows me the lobby outside Cruz’s office.

  ‘Jack, you need to be aware, Cruz might be on the go. The door is still ajar but I can’t say for certain whether it’s in exactly the same position.’

  I tell him this much because I don’t want to admit the other possibility, which is that Cruz is still in his office and there’s someone else at large inside Synergis. I recall Zodiac’s warnings that I wasn’t the only person tasked with this, and think of the weird lock-out on the CCTV system. I scan the feeds, but see no further movement other than Jack appearing in a new area.

  If there is one consolat
ion, it’s that I still haven’t seen the R&D lab, which would indicate that the lights haven’t been triggered up there. But even as I think of this, I am hit by the disturbing possibility that someone else is executing my original plan: manipulating the cameras to conceal the movements of their own partner on-site.

  I give myself a shake. Focus, girl. We need this PIN.

  No matter whether it is Cruz or someone else moving through the building, one thing is certain: I don’t have the time to comb through these emails. It would simply take too long, so I need to think this through logically and narrow the field.

  I decide I can dismiss those from external domains or even people outside Dunwoodie’s department, which is when I remember that in fact there is only one other person who would be party to emails containing this information.

  I look for messages directly from Cruz or forwarded by him. Again, there’s a lot of reading here. I scan a few via the preview window, seeing nothing obvious; certainly no numerical sequences leaping out from all the screeds of text.

  ‘Okay, I am in sight of the R&D labs,’ Jack states. ‘First stop is the server room, but once I’m done there I’m going to need a result on that code for the vault.’

  I look again at all the correspondence: high-level suit stuff. That’s when it hits me that this would need to be automated. Both of these people are too high up and busy for the lowly task of resetting the vault PIN on a daily basis, and they’re not going to trust anyone else with it.

  I scan the list for any emails that look like they might be automatically generated, maybe carrying ‘admin’ or ‘auto’ as a prefix on the sender’s name.

  Nothing.

  I search for ‘do not reply’.

  Nothing.

  A new view pops up in one of the CCTV windows. I see Jack striding through Research and Development, moments away from the server room.

  ‘You remember what you need to do?’ I ask, as he taps his keycard and disappears inside.

  ‘Insert the memory stick into the USB port on server Syn_Indigo. Doing that now.’

  I hold my breath through a long, silent wait, then the connection lights up at my end. I run a sequence of commands to tunnel back via Dunwoodie’s account, and a few seconds later, I have started copying the Project RBA files to my secure server in Finland.