The Johnson Run

by Kai O'Connal

  “A facility that large needs to have some way to get air. If it’s fully staffed, trying to filter air and be self-sufficient would be a logistical nightmare, not to mention expensive.”

  E-jekt typed a few commands into his display and the HVAC system overlaid the floor plan. Most of the vents connected to a couple of central core chimneys that all converged in one of the large chambers on the top floor.

  He highlighted the chamber. “As near as I can determine, this is the primary air circulation chamber. I don’t know what to make of it, since I don’t have a topographical overlay of the area. But the top half of this chamber is made up entirely of heavy machinery. It has several vents stretching above the rest of the level. It’s so cramped there’s no way to get through it without taking the entire system down, which would make it hard to breathe while we’re down there. I doubt it would provide an easy access point.”

  “So the only way we can get in and out is through the main access building, which can be blocked with a giant steel door we’ll have no way of moving or cutting through.”

  E-jekt nodded, looking as pleased as if he just learned he’d have no Matrix access for a week. When she shifted her gaze, she saw Lance had a similar expression. Paz looked disappointed, her head hanging over the edge of the bed and her arms swinging back and forth just above the floor. Keandra understood their disappointment and despondence.

  Her commlink pinged to let her know she had a private message. She pulled it out and checked it.

 

  Keandra stood, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Even Paz looked up as she walked toward the door with a bounce in her step.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get us a way in.”

  27

  Keandra got out of the cab directly across from the restaurant. She paid the driver with a certified credstick, getting a raised eyebrow from him, but no questions. She didn’t want to have Mr. Johnson interrupting her meeting, especially if her contact was the skittish type. She would need time to massage the desired result, something she couldn’t do if she had to check over her shoulder constantly for a strike team.

  She spotted her contact through the front window of the restaurant, sitting where Victoria indicated. The human male wore a suit, well-made and clearly custom cut to fit his frame, based on the way it moved every time he reached out to fiddle with the package on the table. The fabric had a slight shimmer to it, catching the sunlight and making his clothes seem almost liquid. His entire body vibrated near his waist, a clear sign that he bounced his legs underneath the table. Victoria was right: he seemed like the type to bolt and run at the first sign of a threat.

  Keandra entered the restaurant and was surprised at how noisy it was. The sheer number of people talking served as a communal din, drowning out the possibility of hearing anyone who wasn’t at the same table. From the kitchens, the sound of something sizzling penetrated the ruckus of conversations.

  The elven woman behind the front counter flashed a practiced smile at Keandra and opened her mouth to offer assistance, but Keandra ignored her. She turned to the right, walking into the main part of the restaurant and approaching her contact’s table. She had to swerve around a waiter carrying a tray burdened with five plates of steaming food. When she reached the table, the man gave a small start, so small she might not have noticed it if she wasn’t expecting him to be on edge. She offered a smile she hoped was comforting and pulled out the chair across from him, gliding into it with a grace formed from years of practice.

  “Nice to meet you, Mister…?”

  The man shook his head. “I’d prefer to keep names out of this.”

  “As you wish. Our mutual associate sent me to retrieve something. Is that it?”

  The man nodded and slid the small box across the table to her He jerked his hand off it as soon as it was halfway across the table, as if expecting it to burn him. Keandra took her time, easing both hands out to pick it up and resting it in her lap. It was light and didn’t sound as if it had any loose parts inside. The box was about the size of her hand, and only a few centimeters tall. Easy enough to transport, even if she needed to find a way to smuggle herself back into Seattle.

  “So we’re done now?”

  Again Keandra flashed him a smile, leaning back and trying to look comfortable. She shifted to the side and crossed a leg over her knee.

  “It would be suspicious if we didn’t make the pretense of ordering a meal and enjoying a nice lunch together, wouldn’t you agree? We wouldn’t want to do anything to attract undue attention.”

  “Right, of course. You have a point.”

  He settled back in his chair, but the table still shook from the force of him bouncing his heels. The water in the glasses sloshed up the sides; hers, untouched as yet, threatened to spill over. She needed to put him at ease if she wanted to get anything useful out of him. For now, it was time to focus on simple actions, ones that might distract him from his nervous energy.

  “Have you ordered yet? Do you know what’s good?”

  “No, not yet. But their enchiladas are very tasty. Some of the best in the city. They claim people come here from other countries just to try them.”

  Keandra picked up her menu and looked it over, turning the pages to make it seem like she was reading, but most of her attention focused on the man across from her. As soon as she started treating their meeting like a normal lunch encounter, he visibly relaxed and stilled his legs. He flipped through the menu, scanning the pages briefly before turning them one after the next.

  A waiter came by and put a bowl of chips and salsa down between them. Keandra smelled the tomatoes and herbs without needing to waft her hand over the bowl. It made her appreciate the lunch appointment even more. She ordered the enchiladas, and he did the same.

  The waiter took the menus and departed. Keandra tucked the package under her leg, rising to the balls of her foot to make sure not to crush it. Then she put her hands on the table in a nonaggressive position. Her companion seemed at ease now, or at least closer to it, and she didn’t want to jeopardize it.

  “Have you worked with Victoria often?” she asked.

  “A couple of times. We met a few years ago at a conference in Seattle. She can be very convincing.”

  “And relaxing. She’s good at putting even strangers at ease.”

  Her associate nodded again, his eyes focusing on a distant point above her head as he lost himself to memory. A smile teased at the edges of his mouth, letting Keandra know she was on the right track.

  “Have you ever been to her shop, and had some of the tea she brews? I swear there’s some magic embedded in it, but she assures me it’s just a technique she’s practiced for years due to her passion for good tea.”

  “I have, in fact. That’s what I was just thinking of.”

  The smile broke fully across his face as he spoke, and his gaze came back down to focus on Keandra. It was working; she just needed it to keep going. Let him bring it up, rather than pushing him into it. He would get there eventually, it would just take some time to loosen him up.

  “She said you had some questions?”

  Her grin deepened at his words. This was the opportunity she needed.

  “Do you remember the ownership papers you looked up? Well, there’s a slight problem with that area. It’s something that my team and I are more than capable of taking care of. In fact, that’s why we’re here, in addition to running an errand for Victoria. I won’t worry you about the details. It’s a minor thing, and not worth your attention.”

  He visibly relaxed when she offered him the easy out, releasing a breath that Keandra didn’t realize he’d been holding. That was the key: give him the opportunity to extract himself and not ask him to do anything that might incriminate him. As long as she stayed in th
at territory, she could keep him engaged and get what she needed now that she was inside his initial barriers.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Well, you work in some type of approval area for the city of Sacramento, right?”

  In reality, she knew exactly who he worked for, but she didn’t want to tip his paranoia. This also kept him feeling useful. It wouldn’t sabotage his relationship with Victoria because of a trust violation.

  “That’s right. I have to approve building permits, land surveys, and the like. A lot of it is automated these days, but a few things still require a pair of actual eyes to look over and make sure it all checks out.”

  As the conversation distracted him, Keandra reached down and accessed her commlink underneath the table. She kept her arm still as her fingers worked. E-jekt installed multiple custom programs on all their devices. As long as she manipulated thinks in the right way, she’d have everything they needed.

  “I don’t suppose you could grant me a brief view of the permits? My associates need to verify some information, and those records are sealed. I don’t need much, just need to verify a couple of items to make sure everything is in order. Depending on what we find, my employers might need to contact an auditing firm.”

  He chewed on his lip and his brow furrowed as he visibly squirmed in his seat. This was the part where he might offer some resistance, and Keandra had anticipated as much. She allowed him to squirm for a few seconds longer, turning over the possibility and thinking about it. She needed him to consider the options and weigh the risks. When he took a deep breath, Keandra spoke first, jumping over him and stopping his words before they left his mouth.

  “Of course, we wouldn’t expect you to do this for free. We’d be more than willing to pay any necessary access fees for your department, as well as any fees associated with getting an audit process started. I imagine that’s an expensive endeavor.”

  He paused, rubbing the back of his neck as he glanced around, as if expecting someone to be spying on their conversation. After making sure no one was close enough to eavesdrop over the din of the restaurant, he leaned forward and gestured for her to come close.

  “How much are we talking?”

  “I’m sure that can be negotiated.”

  He settled back, probably realizing how suspicious it looked for him to be leaning across the table to talk to his companion. Keandra looked down at the table and counted to three before she raised her gaze back to his face.

  “There’s something else to consider.” She waited again, until he couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer.

  “What?”

  “I’m sure our investigators would find some violations as well. You’d be the hero of your department after finding some serious transgressions. That has to come with some sort of bonus. Or if not, maybe a promotion? Such hard work is usually recognized, especially when it results in additional fines or other revenue.”

  His smile returned in full force. Keandra matched it, genuinely glad to see him warming to her suggestion.

  The waiter approached from behind her, setting down two plates of food covered with so much melted cheese it was impossible to see anything else. The sharp, nutty smell made Keandra’s mouth water. The lunch appointment had definitely been a wise choice. She remained silent, letting him think it over while she carved off a piece of the enchilada. Glancing up, she kept part of her attention on her companion at all times.

  Finally, he pointed his fork at her. “You bring up good points.”

  “Does that mean what I hope it does?”

  “I don’t suppose it would do much harm to provide a cursory glance.”

  “Wonderful to hear. As I said, a brief glance is all that’s required.”

  He pulled out his commlink and logged into the private corporate server. Meanwhile, Keandra ran a program to capture his access information, credentials that E-jekt could use to forge identities as a professional auditing firm. She pretending to look over the forms as she waited for her commlink to record the necessary details.

  “Thank you. You’ve been more helpful than you know.”

  28

  An hour passed before Keandra returned to the Omni. Thanks to her extended lunch, she learned that her new contact’s name was Tyler. He was willing to share that information after only another thirty minutes of casual and deliberately disarming conversation. More importantly, they had the necessary details to gain access through the front door.

  Now that she’d solved that problem, it was time to see how the rest of the team was faring with planning the raid. When she entered, Lance stood on the other side of the doorway, his sword drawn. He put it away when he recognized her.

  Paz sat at the head of the bed with her primary rifle in front of her. Next to it were a couple assault-grade weapons and a wide collection of explosives of various types and sizes. Currently, she was loading magazines from two boxes of bullets. There was more firepower on that bed than any one person could carry, even a dwarf with three robotic limbs.

  The table was cluttered with a bunch of circuitry. E-jekt bent over the disassembled gadgets, alternating between fiddling with the hardware and accessing an AR display at his side. Even though his display was plainly visible, Keandra couldn’t identify what he was doing.

  “I take it we have a plan?”

  E-jekt pushed himself back from the table and turned to Keandra. He called up the wireframe display of the facility and pointed to a circular room on the second-to-lowest floor.

  “Freyr is confident that the controls for the weapons are in this room. Each floor has its own network isolated from the Matrix, as well as from each other. That means we’ll need to get to the eighth floor before we can plug him into the network. With the stolen credentials, I created the foundation for an entire shell company responsible for governmental audits. It’s impossible to say how far that will get us. It might just get us in the front door. Hopefully you’ll be able to convince them to let us throughout the entire facility. However, assuming we can only get past the stairwell…”

  He tapped a few times in the air and a red line traced through the facility from the stairwell to the objective. It bypassed the elevator, taking a combination of stairs and jumping through the two-story testing rooms. The facility didn’t have a single staircase connecting multiple floors. The most it had were stairs going from one level to the next.

  “If we can’t access the elevator, this is the most efficient route to the eighth floor. I bypassed a couple areas that are likely to have the tightest security: choke points, large hallways that look like they were designed for a turret, and so on. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know what resistance we might be facing.”

  A few more button presses, and a green line traced a different route from the stairs to their target. This path went outside the blueprint and jumped back in at what looked like random places. E-jekt grunted and adjusted the map, adding the HVAC vents, and Keandra saw the new route travelled through several of the larger ducts.

  “This is an optional route, taking advantage of the ventilation system. According to the specifications, even I could fit through these ducts. It would be tight, but I could manage.”

  Keandra nodded. She wished they had more information so they could be better prepared, but there was nothing for it. They wouldn’t be able to get more information until they entered the building. At least now they knew where they were going and the best ways to get there, hopefully undetected.

  “And lastly,” E-jekt said, “there’s this gem we almost overlooked.”

  A single room on the first floor flashed. It was on the far end of the floor and stuck out further in that direction than any of the floors beneath it. It was large, one of the biggest rooms in the facility, but otherwise Keandra couldn’t see anything special about it. She waited for E-jekt to explain.

  He pulled up a topographic map of the area, layering it over the top of the facility. It took him a moment to get the images lined up corre
ctly, but when he did, she saw what he was talking about. The ground dropped away sharply at the edge of the room he called out, indicating a spot with only a few meters of ground between the edge of the facility and the surface.

  “They’re very good at covering their tracks, but I caught footage of an APC driving out of the mountain and across the desert. This must be the way they go out and bring in large quantities of supplies. I’d suggest it as a way in, but I think your plan is better than sitting outside waiting for someone to leave.”

  Keandra couldn’t believe their luck. It was far from easy and not even close to guaranteed, but for the first time she felt confident that they were adequately prepared. A lot could still go wrong, but they were better informed than she thought they would be. In the end, that was the most anyone could hope for.

  “Sounds like we have our plan, and faster than we hoped. How are our supplies?”

  Paz picked up a small handgun and tossed it to Keandra. She caught it and turned it over in her hand. It didn’t have a standard magazine, but rather two small canisters attached to the front and rear grips, looking like it could be used with either one or two hands. She curled her fingers around the grip, seeing how it felt. It was a little lighter than her standard firearm, but the weight was off. Rather than most of it resting in the back in her hand, it was evenly distributed and strained her wrist if she held it with only one hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Ares S-III Super Squirt. A lot quieter than your current piece, and it’s loaded with neuro-stun. You hit bare skin with that, and it’ll knock out a troll. Useless if you hit armor, though, so pay attention to where you’re aiming. Even got a concealed holster for it, so you should be able to carry it in as long as we don’t get searched. Never hurts to have more options.”