by Ric Beard
Labyrinth: You go too far.
CorpKill62: Ok, then, Labyrinth. You’ve always had a problem with my way of thinking. Let’s see how many people want to go with me! This is all about freedom, right? So, allow people to make their free choice about which approach they’re going to take.
Labyrinth: Miles gave the reins to me.
CorpKill62: Just what we need, another power-hungry asshole like Vaughn and corporate heads we’re supposed to be fighting against. As I said, Miles is GONE. Be a real man. Stand tall!
Labyrinth: Stop.
CorpKill62: All right, everyone, I’m starting a poll.
Labyrinth: Stop.
Kade inserted a simple voting button on the chat. Then he typed furiously, inserting an automated algorithm to manufacture votes.
CorpKill62: Everyone who wants to make real change and do something besides sit on your asses, here’s the poll. Time to put up or shut up!
Labyrinth: You are nothing short of a traitor. Miles would be ashamed of you.
Kade activated the voting algorithm.
Active Role: 48 Cyber Role: 17
Labyrinth: Traitor.
CorpKill62: Call me what you will, but it looks like my finger is on the pulse of the team.
Active Role: 66 Cyber Role 26
Labyrinth: I’m embarrassed for you.
CorpKill62: Whatever.
Labyrinth: I am shocked at your arrogance.
CorpKill62: I’m shocked at your mirroring of the civic complacency!
Labyrinth Logged off.
CorpKill62: Good!
CorpKill62: Finally, time for some real progress.
Kade stood and went for the booze again. Elation filled him as a surge of energy pulsed through his body. He wanted to run out into the streets with his arms raised in a V. Finally, it was time to get out there and do the work. But for tonight, his work was done and the sofa would do for sleeping arrangements. Kade poured five fingers into a snifter and guzzled it. He planned on getting good and wrecked.
Chapter Ten
Time to Escalate
Day 2
Wednesday, Mar 20, 2137
Lexi pulled a lock of curly red hair behind her ear and spread her index fingers away from each other to zoom in on the image on her glass display. She’d come back to it numerous times since she’d arrived after midnight to check security logs at JenCorp in the wake of the figure in black spying on her the previous evening.
As the chief of security for JenCorp, Lexi was responsible not only for data integrity, but for the integrity of the interior of the building. It was her job to consider whether someone spying on her Tab was trying to piggyback access to the company’s data center. Though the intrusion seemed only to indicate access to the picture she was viewing on-screen, she’d noticed something surprising while running her prudence checks across the JenCorp system.
A special trigger alerted her when people were detected in the building after hours. From the underground data center JenCorp was contracted to maintain for the city’s Security Services street video cameras, all the way to the top floor where C.E.O. Blake Jensen’s office was located, Lexi had her finger on the pulse of all activities transpiring inside the building. The triggers were designed to report only to her console.
But it wasn’t the presence of a trigger that caught her attention in the pre-dawn hours of this Wednesday; rather, it was the absence of a record. Video files for the camera in Blake Jensen’s office had been wiped from the system, as had all the files from the cameras in the first-floor lobby and the ones on the top floor leading to Blake’s office. Each of these deletions had caused her secret system to trigger alerts and write a log file to her encrypted console.
The visitor logs were also bypassed. When someone entered JenCorp, the camera system performed facial recognition and logged the entry, a measure Lexi put in place when she became chief of security two years earlier. A quick check verified that facial recognition software had been taken offline for a brief period, but the cameras themselves were left operational. Someone knowledgeable of the system would understand that keeping the cameras active would bypass any standard alerts, whereas shutting them down would spawn them. By disabling the facial recognition software with root-level access, the culprit had ensured that no alerts would be spawned.
Except that I programmed a private trigger for just that circumstance.
The only person who could order the disabling of the identification features, besides herself, was Blake Jensen. The boss. But another little trick she’d had up her sleeve was an automation to snap stills. The photographs were offloaded to her console via a separate system entirely independent of the facial recognition system. So whoever wiped the video hadn’t known about the snapshots, one of which was displayed on her screen.
Blake was one of two men standing near his desk just before midnight last night. That wasn’t necessarily unusual, considering his apartment was accessed via a hidden entry via a bookshelf behind his desk. The boss often worked at the terminal of his desk after hours. She’d seen stills and video feeds of many nights when Mister Jensen sat at his desk, sipping brandy—or whatever the hell it was he drank—while working into the wee hours.
Lexi’s shock was at the sight of the other man. There was no mistaking his gaunt, pasty form as he hovered around Jensen’s desk. His name was Morgan and he was Mayor Vaughn’s chief aide. Seeing that the mayor was a rival of Mikael Jensen, the former CEO of JenCorp, Blake’s father—as well as Lexi’s mentor…
What the hell is that asshole doing in your office after hours, Blake Jensen? What are you up to?
As Lexi stared at the high-resolution image on her compression glass console, she made a mental comparison of Blake’s features to those of his father. Both had rugged chins that spilt ever so slightly in the center and strong jawlines with five-o-clock shadows at nine A.M. To hear Blake talk about the company his father transferred to him was to know he idolized the man.
Lexi squinted at the image and frowned. Blake’s father, who’d confided in Lexi just yesterday that he planned to oppose Mayor Vaughn in the upcoming election, would also wonder at why this dirty politician’s pit bull was standing in his son’s office so late at night, taking part in a meeting shrouded in secrecy on the same night an explosion brought down a building across town. There was little doubt in her mind that Blake knew Mikael was running in opposition to the mayor in a few months, so a question plagued Lexi.
Why are you meeting with the enemy, Blake and, more importantly, why are you working so hard to cover your tracks so I don’t see it?
Letting this event pass without action would be a betrayal to the man who welcomed Lexi Shaw into the city six years ago and made it possible for her to thrive within its walls. It was high time she found out what was going on here. It was time to establish a tighter relationship with the son, Jensen.
It was time to escalate.
Chapter Eleven
A Dastardly Secret, No Doubt
His chief of security spied upon in her own apartment. The same security chief who labored to provide him the amazing report detailing the activities of The Underground. Was it tied to the explosion? Corporate espionage? A stalker?
The possibilities were limitless.
“Shades,” he said. The wood blinds opened and slid to the top of the window where they folded into a neat stack. Blake gazed out the window at the remnant plume of the destruction of a night ago.
This was the highest view of the city. Though it was even better at night, the sun rising on the opposite side cast its light across the skyline, washing in gold the windows of buildings for miles. It was a view he’d enjoyed with a cup of coffee in-hand on more days than he could count, from the time his father sat in the chair behind him until he took the reins of the company. Enjoyment of the gold wash on this day was trumped by dark memories of a violent time.
As Blake eyed the fading dark gray cloud of dust hovering above the city wall, ghosts of towering structu
res burning in the distance danced in his head—a memory born in this very office as he sat in his father’s lap and watched the destruction unfold as badlanders brought chaos down upon the city below. His father’s words echoed in his mind.
“Remember the fear,” Mikael Jensen had told him all those years ago. “Bravery in the absence of fear is no such thing. It’s okay to be afraid, Blake. But never let the fear rule you. Never let fear dictate your decisions. In all things, let logic be your guide. Do this, and you will someday lead the world to better things.”
That fear had driven Blake not just to know, but to understand the history of the city and the world before. The attacks of the badlanders who called themselves The Chain caught the city almost completely off guard in those days of the wall’s second iteration, following a decade of quiet. But even with spans of years between attacks as The Chain regrouped, the city came to expect a larger opposing force the next time. The change came when the city engineers mapped out the infrastructure to mass produce concrete. A single innovation swayed the advantage in Triangle City’s direction as it resisted subsequent attacks for the 25 years it took to complete the wall. Each time the bastards destroyed a section, the city built back twice as much in response. It sent a message that The Chain can come time and again, but Triangle City would never give up what it has struggled to build without a fight.
How far we’ve come since I was a boy.
A soft, musical chime filled the room from the in-ceiling speakers above. Blake smiled. His father, Mikael, hated buzzers.
“Yes?”
“Miss Shaw is here,” his secretary’s monotone voice rang through the office.
“Send her in.”
Blake shot a glance at his chief of security’s report displayed on the transparent, compression glass screen hovering above his desk. At first glance, it seemed to Blake as if a potential threat was taking care of itself. A hand-rolled cigar smoldered in the ashtray next to the monitor.
This report was the kind of work that had enticed Mikael Jensen into making Lexi the chief of security at such a young age. It seemed his father’s faith in her had been well-founded. Lexi was the genius behind the curtain. She was the best private surveillance person in the city with friends in Security Services. She networked like a pro. But now she’d surpassed even herself. She’d put her finger on the pulse of The Underground.
A click sounded and the doors swung open, revealing Lexi’s athletic form standing in the doorway, a Tab dangling from one hand.
“Lexi.”
“Mister Jensen,” she said.
“Please come in.”
“Thank you, Mister Jensen.” For years, he’d come to this office and heard all the employees of JenCorp refer to his father as Mister Jensen. It wasn’t a title for which Blake aspired, but his father taught him long ago that accepting respect was a sign of respect in itself. Besides, it showed others you were entitled to it, making it more likely they would give it. The thoughts were erased as he watched her long strides as she made for the chair across from his desk. She wore slim-fitting black slacks and a reflective silk blouse, open at the neck. Blake was used to seeing her hair pulled back and clipped behind her head. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the loose, fiery red curls flowing freely to her shoulders.
“Have you done something different with your hair?”
Lexi looked at him and smirked.
“Thank you for noticing.” It sounded more like an exercise in etiquette than a real thank you. That was the thing with Lexi. No one knew what she was thinking. She continued. “I have a dickens of a time keeping it out of my face, but it curled itself up nicely today and I thought I’d let it dangle. Do you like it?”
Blake was taken aback, unsure how to answer her question.
“I think it’s…lovely,” he said, as he realized he absolutely did.
“Thank you.” Lexi flashed a smile of pearly teeth instead of a smirk.
His original discomfort with her when she’d joined the company over five years ago was the product of his inability to read her. Blake considered himself adept at figuring people out by their non-verbal communication, the way they stood, the way they sat, the way they used their hands when they talked. When Lexi Shaw had come to JenCorp, it was like the switch on his abilities to read people had been flicked off. Lexi was interesting.
Very interesting.
Now Blake was wondering if he’d ever seen her smile before. What was it with him today? Or was it something with her? He decided to alter course.
Get out of your head. She’s staring at you.
“You had an intrusion in your apartment last night.”
“Oh, yes, Mister Jensen,” she said, mocking him. She fanned herself with her hand. “Horrible how the city has fallen. Especially when the chief executive officer of a major corporate partner of the city sends his goons after a defenseless little woman.”
Blake looked at her quizzically and then smiled.
“What are you, five-foot-ten? How many pressure points have you taught me in combat training that could disable a person?” He smiled. “That’s not the intrusion I was talking about.”
Where a normal person might flash him a look of confusion, Lexi’s expression turned stony. Unreadable.
“Oh! The Tab!”
“Yes. The Tab.”
“Sorry, sir.”
Blake waved it away. “An easy misunderstanding. But while we’re on it, I heard Archie had to have an adjustment.”
“Oh, really?” Lexi asked, tilting her head to one side. “I thought I laid him out pretty flat. Shouldn’t have hurt his back or anything. Hmm.”
Blake raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Perhaps he had his ego adjusted.” To his utter surprise, Lexi laughed. She didn’t snicker, she didn’t project the usual smirk. Lexi Shaw actually laughed. “Something has changed in you.”
The words were out of his mouth before he’d thought about what he was saying.
“Nothing new, sir.”
Relief washed over him as she seemed evidently unconcerned with the statement against her personal thoughts.
“So, the Tab?”
“I haven’t even had time to report it yet. How did you—?”
“You access the company network. Though we can’t view information local to your device, we can tell when someone else does. It sent a—”
“Signal to the security servers,” Lexi said. “GridLock Service, of course.”
“Any idea who it was? What they wanted? Do you think it was The Underground? The timing is curious.”
“That’s the strange thing,” Lexi replied. “Best I can figure, it was line-of-sight—not The Underground’s style.”
Blake paused for a moment, staring at her. He worked his jaw.
“Someone was watching you in your apartment?”
“From the building across the street. It’s the only explanation. I searched my place up and down for devices. I planned on having security do a sweep.” She parted her red lips as if she planned to say more, but then pushed them closed.
Is she holding something back?
He pushed on. “Do a sweep. With your blessing, I’m going to report it to Triangle City Security Services.”
“Of course,” Lexi said, though something in her expression made her seem uncomfortable.
“You’re worried about your network of spies?”
She raised a pencil-thin, red eyebrow. “Network of spies? What am I, an intelligence agency?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
Lexi laughed again, this time pressing a hand to her chest, drawing Blake’s eyes to the region. He quickly flicked his gaze back to her crystal blues. They gazed at him for just a moment, the muscle under one eye twitching ever-so-slightly.
She thinks you were looking at her chest, idiot.
But then the moment was gone.
“I’m not worried about my—” she flicked quotations with her fingers, “—network of spies. It’s not like the sweep would involve m
y place, anyway. Let them check the building across the street. And thank you, Mister Jensen.”
“And what might you be hiding in your place?” Blake asked. “A dastardly secret, no doubt! Perhaps a small fusion bomb? A station to monitor the mayor’s office?”
“You mock me, sir. Nothing so sinister, I assure you. I just don’t like the government poking around my things.”
“I see. I can relate to that.”
“I’m sure you can, Mister Jensen.”
“You’re my head of security, Lexi. I have to forgive your formality when people are around, but please, at least call me Blake when we’re the only ones in the office.”
Lexi didn’t miss a beat.
“Not in this lifetime, sir.” One side of her beautiful mouth ticked up again.
Beautiful mouth? What is wrong with you today?
Blake couldn’t resist the smile that forced itself onto his face. He let it slide away and tapped his screen.
“Now to the reason for your visit.”
“Or your summons, as the case may be.” She flicked an eyebrow and lowered it.
She seems…playful.
“I think you’ve outdone even yourself with this report. Your ability to crawl into the underbelly hidden to the rest of us—”
“Thank you, Mister Jensen.”
“It looks like our friends are about to start a little tiff.”
Tiff? Really?
Blake realized how relaxed he suddenly felt. Their relationship had been so formal before, but something seemed different today. Was it her loosened hair? The laugh he hadn’t known existed?
You need to get out more, his inner-voice said. He adjusted his posture in the chair.