by Ada Redmond
She hadn't been lying about being 'dug in'. She'd set up a couple of sheet metal boards round the back wall of a service room, cutting herself off from the rest of the residential tunnel. There were only a couple of odds and ends on the floor and not a single scrap of the tech I'd seen her surrounded by earlier.
"Here," she said, tossing me a thumb drive. "Yeah, it's the same one," she continued, cutting me off when I recognised it and opened my mouth to question her. "And yes, you do need it."
I made my way over to a corner and slid down the wall, my toes aching inside my boots. Terminal hesitated for a moment then dipped down in front of me with her legs crossed. "I managed to stop it from wiping once I'd synced it to my network," she explained, looking at me. "The virus, I mean. It was designed to infiltrate my system and make copies of itself in every directory it could find. Sneaky little bastard, but I managed to quarantine the original file before it could delete off the drive."
I blinked at her, and she rolled her eyes.
"It means that we have proof that the file originated somewhere else. As in, neither you or I programmed it. Files carry traces of the machines they were created on. You can prove that it came from your friend's computer. Well," she paused, "if you can find the one she's been using, anyway."
"If I can get this to my old boss," I said, spinning the drive between my fingers. "I might have a shot of talking our way out of this."
She nodded. "Of course, it's not like it'll matter if either of us gets snatched. Kova has half the sec firms in the country in their back pockets, not to mention the police. You know that better than anyone."
I didn't bother to answer; it was true enough. When I'd been Chief, I'd kept things as above-board as possible, if for no other reason than it made for a quiet life. Now and again, payments went through and certain reports were either lost or altered, and there was no point in denying it. But the company line was always the same—we were working for the greater good, creating sustainable products that would benefit the human race for centuries to come. And sometimes shortcuts were necessary. I had no doubt the new guy would handle things much the same.
Terminal took a deep breath, and I closed my eyes in anticipation.
"Did it hurt?" she asked.
I sighed, almost in relief, thinking of the children who'd asked the same earlier that day. For all the cruel comments from before, she'd at least tried to broach the subject gently. "No, I was in a medically induced coma while they worked on me."
"Oh," she trailed off then shook her head. "So, like, I get that you're kinda the Iron Empress," she said, and I couldn't help but flinch at the reference to the much loved robotic super heroine from the movies. "But how the hell are you going to get into Kova? The place is like a fortress, isn't it?"
I didn't open my eyes when I answered. As I spoke, I pictured it all in my mind, following along my planned route as I explained. "Easiest way to infiltrate is through the basement car park in Zone Four," I started. "There is a section of old ventilation ducts large enough to crawl through that lead you right up into the ground floor meeting hall on the south side. If they haven't blocked them off," I admitted. "But even if they have, there'll be no one about to hear me break through.
"Security checkpoints are between the main halls on every floor between Zones One and two, but there'll only be night watchmen on the lower and top floors until six a.m., when the day shift takes over. The R&D labs will be locked up tight, but I don't need to pass through them. Every other sec measure between floors is automated overnight. The office I want is the tech centre on the sixteenth floor. Once I'm past the main hall on the first floor, I can take the stairs straight up. There aren't any cameras there."
"Okay," Terminal said when I opened my eyes again. "Sounds like you got that covered."
"Can you access their system from here?" I asked her. "You did mention something about being really bloody good at this sort of thing."
She leaned to one side and pulled out an external drive. I watched as she hooked one cable into her tablet and another into a mess of wires that were connected to the service lines running along the walls around us. "I can probably gatecrash their network once you're inside," she said thoughtfully, fingers skimming across the glossy surface. "If you hook up a transmitter to one of their server hubs, I might even be able to remote control the surveillance nodes if you want me to."
I nodded. "That'd help. I'd rather concentrate on the human element as much as possible. They're a lot harder to predict."
She grinned. "Ain't that the truth."
"Okay," I sighed, pushing myself up. "Nightlights are wasting."
"Keep the line open?" she asked, tapping a finger against her ear, sounding almost shy.
I looked down at her. She was small, unkempt and not nearly as tough as she liked to pretend she was. I nodded, resenting the fact that even after she'd implied more than once that I wasn't human, I was starting to like her. I nodded. "Sure."
I left her to hunker down, climbing, crawling and apologising my way back into the mainline tunnels and carrying on towards Mile End. I was lucky enough not to encounter any more amped up Russians along my route. I managed to trade the last of the chocolate bars I'd bought that morning for info on the patrol movements round the station, and a half pack of cigarettes got me a decent enough distraction to slip past the checkpoint and make it back up to the surface without incident.
The scanner at the station exit would have pinged me, but the chances of anyone looking over the live data were slim to none, and by the time anyone figured out where I'd gone through, hopefully Kova would have retracted the alert on me.
I hadn't been by since before the accident, but it wasn't as though Kova was easy to forget. The spire was a green-lit monolith, garish and bright between the rest of the skyscrapers on Mile End. It was an oddly shaped tower, with large glass panels jutting out at different angles as it rose up into the clouds.
There was minimal security on the perimeter, and slipping by unnoticed was easy enough. I thought about leaving a note for the new guy in my old office. It only took me fifteen minutes to breach the subbasement.
Tearing a chunk out of the old vent shaft behind the visitor parking section and climbing up was one of the least dignified things I'd done in recent months. And considering the way my year had started off, that was saying something. But I did it, quickly and quietly.
I was standing in the meeting room I'd told Terminal about by the time the clocks hit ten p.m. and evening gave away to night. I ran my fingers along the mahogany of the large oval table in the centre, allowing scrapbooked memories to drift across my vision. I'd been interviewed in a room just like it up on the seventh floor, meeting Danny for the first time in the hallway not long after.
"Is it weird?" Terminal asked. "Being back there?"
Different memories flashed across my eyes, ones of trapped, screaming people and bright, white-hot light. I shook my head. "Nah."
"The press said you went back in. That you were fired because you didn't follow protocol or some shit."
I shrugged, still taking in the room. There'd been no threat, no demands, just a seemingly random act of terrorism. But blame had to be assigned somewhere. Action had needed to be taken. It had come down to politics, in the end. At least they'd saved my life, I supposed.
"I was hired to protect the people here," I heard myself say softly. "I thought, I dunno, that maybe I could defuse it? I knew they'd never be able to clear the building in time..."
Terminal waited for me to speak again, but when I didn't, she let out a slow breath. "If you want me in the system, you might wanna get moving," she told me.
I didn't reply, leaving the memories behind and easing the door open to peer around it. The floor was thankfully quiet and I made my way over to the main stairwell silently.
My heart was pounding in my chest again, though there were no rude tourists to take it out on. My left eye was working overtime inside my skull, the overlay across my artifici
al retina displaying my heart rate and O2 levels. I spared a brief thought to wonder if it could be programmed to show me other types of data, too, but then I could hear Terminal's voice in my ear again.
"I'm reading a lot of network activity on the floor above you. That the building's server room?"
"Yeah," I said, continuing up the stairs, sticking to the wall so I'd have a shot at spotting anyone above before they spotted me.
"Good. The sooner you can place that transmitter, the more use I'll be. Kinda sucks sitting down here twiddling my thumbs while you get to do all the 007 shit."
I grinned, easing out into the narrow entrance to the fifteenth floor and waiting for a few moments. If there was someone on duty around here, they were between the hubs somewhere ahead of me.
This floor was a hive of electrical activity in the middle of the tower, a far cry from the sparse, open-plan offices and the carefully sectioned off labs above and below it. It was Danny's pride and joy, her refuge when dealing with everyone else got a little too much. I'd found her in here more than once, tucked away and surrounded by the machines she loved so much.
I'd never really understood the fascination myself. And how ironic did that feel now, considering I had about as much in common with the servers these days as I did with the rest of the human race?
I placed my hand against one of the glass panels that separated the first collection of hubs from the outer room and stepped inside. The long line of blinking towers was bathed in a deep blue glow. The air was crisp and cool, the air conditioning going at full blast through the vents below my feet. "You need me to access anything in particular?"
"Nah, just open one up and connect the processor I gave you. I can direct a VCN from here."
I did as I was told, approaching a server and pulling out the device. I was still standing there a few minutes later when Terminal sighed down the line, "Uh, you can go now."
I was halfway through sliding open the panel when I heard footsteps. Swearing under my breath, I let it fall shut again and pressed up against the hub behind me. The line I was in was narrow and dim, but if someone looked inside there'd be no way to miss me. I waited, unable to hear them approach over the sound of the servers and the blasts of air from the ventilation system.
When he finally walked by, I caught a glimpse of my heart rate spiking over my eye before I slipped out behind him. "I'm looping the cameras," Terminal whispered in my ear. "In 3… 2... 1, you're clear."
I grabbed him from behind, my left arm circling his neck and choking him. He struggled, kicking at the air in front of him in a panic before falling unconscious. I lowered him to the floor with a sigh when I saw who it was.
"Ah, sorry, Mike," I muttered. Poor bloke had been one of my favourites; good guy, older and wiser with no problems taking orders from a woman. If this thing turned out for the best, I'd really have to get him something to apologise.
"Holy shit, that was awesome!" Terminal exclaimed. "We should totally break into Harrods or something next; we'd make a fortune!"
I couldn't help but grin at the words, enjoying the praise despite everything. "Why am I not surprised that your first thought is to take to a life of crime?"
Terminal laughed. "Uh, haven't you heard? All us unchipped heathens are thieves and scoundrels. It's in my nature."
The Tech Centre was another floor up, and I continued a lot more slowly than before, suddenly wary of others who might be milling about. I hoped not to leave a trail of unconscious bodies behind me; I had a feeling it would make my case a little less sympathetic if I managed to reach the penthouse and explain myself.
"You're clear," Terminal told me softly. "I've got live feeds and I'm re-streaming them before they hit the sec suite downstairs. Your boss isn't around, so I guess you'll have to leave him a note," she sniggered. "There are five other people logged into the building, though," she told me. "And guess who one of them is."
I only nodded. I didn't know what I was planning to say. There'd be little point in antagonising her, assuming she didn't just sound an alarm the moment she caught sight of me. Playing it cool was really my only option, since the Tech Centre was completely open-plan with nothing much to hide behind, short of a few desks. Getting the jump on her was out of the question, unfortunately.
I rounded the stairs and took a breath, watching my heart rate settle and trying to convince myself I was calm and collected. And not about to confront someone I thought had feelings for me about why I was suddenly guilty of trading secrets from a company I no longer worked for.
"I know you're here," Danny called from her desk a moment later. "The slummer is good, but she's not that good."
"Bullshit," Terminal spat in my ear, "I bloody am; that was a lucky guess!"
I muted the line as I stepped out into her line of sight.
"You know, breaking and entering is a crime," she said, eyes smiling at me over the top of one of the three monitors that surrounded her desk at the back of the room. "As is doctoring security feeds."
I didn't move, looking around at all the half constructed towers, hubs and after-school projects the techies up here loved to fiddle with when they had the time. "At least I'm actually guilty of them."
"I'd say I was sorry, but it's not as though you've believe me," she said, leaning over the edge of her desk.
She'd been packing; there was a slim case full of small tablets and drives, along with a couple of ebook readers tossed inside. She was shutting up shop.
"So it was all you then?"
She blinked at me. "Well, yes."
"No, not this," I said, making the connection as I spoke the words. "The explosion in January, in the R&D lab."
She paused, closing the case softly and sighing. "I had no idea you'd react the way you did, you know. But by the time I found out you'd gone back in, there was no way to stop it. I only needed to cause enough damage to slow down the progress on some of the projects. We needed the extra time to come up with a rival product."
"You risked those lives for the sake of a profit margin?" I asked, incredulous. She didn't answer. "Don't suppose you wanna let me in on which 'we' you're referring to?"
She shrugged. "I don't suppose I do."
"So what happened? You couldn't have just quit? You know, like a normal person."
Danny spun one of her long braids around a finger, walking around the desk. "That new Chief of ours, the ex-SWAT. He's very… detail oriented. He'd been obsessing over the reports on the incident for weeks before I realised he was getting suspicious. Then I heard him talking to the boss a few days ago and... well. I needed a distraction."
"So you figured I could take the hit for you, again."
"You're the perfect fall guy. And with your background, well. You were in a perfect position to know everything about this company, with just the right kind of suspect connections to set up a deal. It just made so much sense. Besides, they'd figure out you had nothing to do with it eventually, and by then I'd be halfway across the world with a new identity."
"And now?"
"Now? Nothing. What can you do? It's not as though the slummer can add any credibility to your story, is it? Go turn yourself in; Denton might even go easy on you."
"That's funny, I was about to suggest the same," I said, moving forward into the room. She hadn't even considered the possibility that Terminal was as good as she was. That she'd been able to keep the original file and give us a vital piece of evidence to defend ourselves with. I was just about to clue Danny in when she stepped towards me with a look of calculated steel.
I should have expected a gun, really. It wasn't like I didn't know how fond she was of backup plans.
She raised it without hesitation, focused and deliberate. She clicked off the safety without breaking eye contact. "I'd hate to be responsible for yet another one of your organs needing a replacement," she said. "But I will if you take another step in my direction."
The fire alarm going off wasn't in either of our plans. For the briefest of second
s, suddenly bathed in bright, startling red lights, we simply looked at one another. I don't know if I moved first, but I know I didn't realise that I'd taken a bullet until her fist had connected with my shoulder, forcing my head down.
I watched the blood seep through my shirt as she kicked my legs out from under me and grabbed the case, making a break for the door. I'll probably never know how far she actually got before they caught her.
I watched my pulse become erratic as the shock set in, managing to reach up to my ear and un-mute my connection to Terminal as I pressed my other hand against the wound in my chest.
I let my head roll against the carpet, trying not to laugh. Same shit, different day, bleeding out in a building I thought I'd left behind for good six months ago. I started thinking about how I really had been trying to make a name for myself as a half-decent investigator, and how I'd really love to say all this was happening in the line of duty. But Danny had made it personal.
"I'm sorry, about before," was the last thing I heard as the world went fuzzy and dark. "About calling you a robot."
*~*~*
Liking it to déjà vu would have, somehow, been an understatement. Everything felt the same, from the pain in my side to the sound of the machines I was hooked up to. The smell of disinfectant made my stomach turn over.
I was back in the Kova Medical Unit in South Kensington, the same place they'd taken me to after the explosion. It was one of the most high-tech practices this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I hoped to god Terminal had found a way to get our evidence into the right hands; otherwise, I was pretty sure I'd have to foot the bill for my treatment right before they shipped me off to prison for the rest of my days.
Thankfully, the first voice I heard alleviated my initial panic somewhat.
"Well, never thought I'd have to go through this again."
I opened my eyes. "Isn't that my line?"
Richard Denton, CEO of Kova Domestic and my former employer, put down his copy of Motorist Weekly magazine and looked me over. "The bullet came out intact. I asked them to keep it for you."