by Dan Wells
“Most big office buildings do,” said Bao. “But they’re not tracking you, they’re tracking your djinni. Someone without one could move through the building almost undetected.”
“Maybe we need you to come with us, then,” said Anja.
“Maybe you need to forget the whole thing,” said Bao. “This is super dangerous.”
“But it’s important,” said Marisa. “You live in Mirador, too—Sigan is squeezing all of us. You can’t run your skimming scam if you can’t afford to be on the network. Then what options will your family have?”
Bao nodded, but grudgingly.
“I’m not any happier about it than you are,” said Marisa. “I told you—we’re losing our house, maybe the restaurant as well. We’re all losing something. This is our chance to fight back.”
“Maybe,” said Bao, closing his eyes. He let out a long, slow sigh. “I have to admit, the more I think about breaking in to this place, the more . . . intrigued I am by the challenge.” He opened his eyes and grinned.
“There’s the Bao we know,” said Marisa.
“But I need more info,” said Bao. “A job like this needs factory precision.”
“Then let’s go get it,” said Marisa, and blinked on her djinni to call an autocab.
“What,” said Bao, “right now?”
“I’ll cover your next couple of hours of work,” said Anja.
“I don’t want your money—”
“Too late,” said Anja. “Just transferred the funds.” Bao’s phone buzzed, and Anja laughed. “Did you just skim twenty-five cents from me sending you money?”
Bao grinned, looking at the phone. “Twenty-six cents.” He put the phone away. “Looks like you just hired me. Let’s go meet some cybercriminals.”
An autocab rolled up, and Anja paid it while Marisa linked to its navigator and fed it the address in Kirkland.
“Los Angeles County has declared a Red Drinking Day for the Kirkland area today,” said the autocab. “Would you like to stop along the way for a clean beverage? There are thirty-seven cafes along our route.”
“No ads,” said Anja, and paid an extra fee to shut them off. The interior of the cab was like a miniature train car: too low to stand in, but with two benches facing each other across a central aisle. It was like a little room on wheels. The cab pulled out into traffic, seamlessly joining the endless stream of cars, and Marisa leaned back on the bench.
“So what should we expect?” asked Bao. “I’ve never met a wanted criminal before.”
“I find that hard to believe,” said Anja.
“I’ve never met any who brand themselves as revolutionaries,” said Bao. “They sound intense.”
“Intense is a good word,” said Marisa. “Alain Bensoussan is . . . driven. And idealistic in the sense that ideals are what’s driving him. But he’s kind of funny, too; I mean, it’s not like he’s a joyless scold or anything.”
“Calm down,” said Anja, “you’re not writing him a Valentine’s card.”
“And the girl?” asked Bao.
“Scary,” Marisa repeated. “He’s the brains, she’s the muscle. Her name’s Renata.”
“Last name?” asked Bao, pulling out his phone.
“What is it with you two?” asked Anja. “This is corporate espionage, not a dating service.”
“I want to look them up,” said Bao, tapping on his phone. “Assuming those are real names, I’m sure I can find out a bit more about them.”
“I didn’t get her full name,” said Marisa. “And I didn’t risk scanning their IDs.”
“Alain Bensoussan has no criminal record,” said Bao, reading from his screen. “French national, immigrated to LA a couple of months ago. Is this him?” He held up the phone, and Marisa nodded at Alain’s familiar face.
“Girl, he’s hot,” said Anja. “You didn’t tell me he was hot.”
“I didn’t really notice,” said Marisa, hoping her face didn’t give her away.
“That is a bald-faced lie,” said Anja. “You rode on the back of a motorcycle with this guy—you noticed.”
“You can’t see someone’s face when you’re behind them on a motorcycle,” said Marisa.
“That’s because your legs are wrapped around him,” said Anja, grinning wickedly.
Bao laughed. “If that’s how you ride motorcycles, I think you’re doing it wrong.”
“All I know is,” said Anja, “if that guy sat in my lap on a rumbling motorcycle, I would make sure not to leave without a very clear sense of how hot he was.”
“So he’s hot,” said Marisa, eager to change the subject. “Fine. That’s pretty much his least important characteristic on this mission.”
“Yes,” said Anja, stabbing the air with her finger. “Let’s call this a mission. Wait: Mission or job? Which sounds better?” Her eyes went wide. “Or quest. Can we call this a quest?”
Bao smiled. “I’ve never planned a robbery with a four-year-old before. This should be fun.”
“Please,” said Anja, “I’m seventeen. That makes me at least four four-year-olds.”
“Have you guys ever been to Kirkland?” asked Marisa.
“Never,” said Anja. “Is it as run-down as they say?”
“Just look out the window,” said Marisa.
The autocab pulled off the main highway and wove down into Kirkland, and Marisa noted again the slow, subtle shift as the giant city turned slowly into a slum. Men and women in ragged clothes walked past them on the street, pushing carts full of junk; children played in patches of shade; solemn gangsters with dark, darting eyes stood on the street corners and watched the cab roll by. The three friends watched in silence, until at last the autocab pulled to a stop in front of a low cinder-block shack.
“You have arrived at your destination,” said the cab. “Thank you for choosing Gonzalez Transport.”
“You’re sure this is the right place?” asked Bao.
“I wasn’t here during the day,” said Marisa, putting her hand on the cab door but not yet opening it. “I recorded the GPS coordinates, though. The shape is right at least.”
“Let’s go, then,” said Anja, and triggered the button to open the cab. The door slid open, letting in a furnace-like blast of hot air from the dusty street. Marisa climbed out, glanced at the other pedestrians, who were staring at her, and stood in front of the door. After a moment she shrugged her shoulders and knocked.
“Quién es?” shouted Renata from inside.
“Heartbeat!” Marisa called back. She heard a faint click and some rapid muttering, and then the door flew open.
“Parkslayer!” shouted Renata. She was dressed in an oily tank top, her hands covered in black dust, but she threw her arms around Marisa anyway and smeared her with both. “And you brought friends! Hi, friends.” She pulled a thick black handgun from her waistband, its modified barrel hinting at some kind of special ammunition. “My name’s Renata, and if you tell anyone that, I’ll kill you. Come on in!”
Bao shot Marisa a grim look, but followed the girls inside the little shack. The autocab drove away, and Renata closed the door behind them.
“I didn’t expect to see you back again,” said Alain. He was also in a tank top—the shack was sweltering—and he and Renata were working on something intricate and messy on the old kitchen table.
“We’re making bullets,” said Renata, sitting down. “Want to help?”
“Yes,” said Marisa, “but not with the bullets.”
Alain hadn’t taken his eyes off of her. “Marisa Carneseca,” he said. “Is that your real ID?”
“I’m not using the anonymizer today,” said Marisa. “This is the real me, and these are my real friends.”
“I’m Anja,” said Anja.
Bao waved. “I’m Bao. Nice to meet you both. Is the bullet thing like a hobby, or do you intend to actually kill people with them?”
“If you love something,” said Renata, “shoot it out of the barrel of a gun.”
“I thi
nk I got a card like that once for my birthday,” said Bao.
Alain wiped his hands on his overalls. “You said you want to help us. With what?”
“With this, first of all,” said Marisa, and pulled from her bag the pair of pants she’d borrowed. “Folded but not washed. The nuli can’t do anything unless they’re chipped, and then the house would know we had an extra pair of pants, and then my parents would know, and it would be a whole thing.” She handed him the folded pants. “Thanks for letting me borrow them.”
Alain took them. “You’re welcome. Now: What else are you planning to help with?”
“With your Sigan hack,” said Marisa. She steeled her courage and said it. “We want to help you take them down.”
Alain shook his head. “This isn’t a clubhouse.”
“I know that,” said Marisa.
“We’re not running a fantasy camp for rebellious teens,” Alain continued. “I’m glad that something has made you care, but you’re not warriors.”
“I agree with him,” said Bao. “Let’s call that cab back.”
“You tried to recruit me before,” said Marisa.
“That was before,” said Alain. He picked up a bullet casing and clamped it in a vise, ready to fill with gunpowder.
Marisa stepped forward, covering the casing with her hand. “The plan you told me didn’t involve shooting anyone.”
“Plan A never does,” said Alain. “The bullets are for Plan B.”
“You start shooting at literally the first setback?” asked Bao.
“There’s a better way,” said Marisa. “We can get you into the database.”
“You’re a great hacker,” said Alain, “but it’s airgapped. No one can get into it.”
“We can,” said Marisa.
Alain paused, setting down his tools and looking up. “Okay, I’ll bite. How are three rich kids going to get us into a hard-line workstation?”
“The way that only rich kids can,” said Marisa. “We’re going to take you to a party.”
Renata stopped working and looked up, her eyes gleaming. “Now I’m intrigued, Parkslayer. What party?”
“Anja and I are on an Overworld team,” said Marisa. Alain shook his head dismissively, and she waved her hands to keep his attention. “No, listen. Our team’s been invited to the Forward Motion charity tournament next week, and there’s an opening gala this Saturday night, in the Sigan building. Any other day of the year you couldn’t get past the lobby without six forms of ID, but on Saturday, we’re the honored guests.”
Alain considered this a moment. “What’s your plan?”
“It starts with Bao,” said Anja. “He doesn’t have a djinni. He’ll be able to move through the building without being detected.”
“Maybe,” said Alain. “If they’re having a gala, though, they’ll have plenty of human security as well.”
“The invitation says to come to the main doors by the plaza,” said Anja. “They’ll do a standard ID check and security screening there.”
“And they’ll pay extra attention to the guy with no djinni,” said Renata. “Since I assume they’ll be scanning everyone at the door.”
“I can fake a djinni ID if I need to,” said Bao, holding up his phone. “And I can probably slip past any guards.”
“The building will be passively scanning all night,” said Alain. “If you turn off your fake ID, it’ll know, and they’ll go on high alert.”
Bao nodded. “So I’ll keep it on, and leave it in the party somewhere.”
“And then what?” asked Renata. “You’ll just walk out of the room, find a hard line, and log in?”
“More of a sneak than a walk,” said Bao, “but yes. We’ll get a new tablet for the hack, completely clean of any identifying information, and prep it in advance.”
“That’s my job,” said Anja, wiggling her eyebrows.
Marisa looked directly at Alain. “We’ll go in with you, me, Anja, Bao, and Sahara—she’s our other friend, and the leader of our Overworld team. Bao fakes the ID, we get inside and head up to the eightieth floor for the party; Bao slips away, finds a hard-line workstation, and plugs in the tablet. We can use a buffer overflow to log us in, the tablet Wi-Fi will bridge the airgap directly to your djinni, and then you can just . . . look through the whole database and find whatever financial data you need.”
Renata chuckled. “You lied to us, Parkslayer.” She fixed Marisa with her glare. “You’re way more than just a kiddie coder joyriding someone’s network.”
“I’m looking for some info behind the airgap as well,” said Marisa. “I’ll connect to the tablet just like Alain. We get what we want, you get what you want, and Sigan gets what they deserve.”
Alain looked at each of them in turn. “It’s risky,” he said, and then paused. “But it’s doable.”
“Maybe,” said Bao. “I still need some details from you.”
Alain nodded. “What?”
“Timeline,” said Bao. “ID scans aside, I figure I’ll have maybe twenty minutes away from the party before a human guard notices I’m physically absent. Thirty tops. Can you get what you need in that time?”
“I can,” said Marisa.
“I can’t,” said Alain. “First: I can’t get rid of the virus Sigan uploaded into my djinni during the last hack, and it’s slowing me down. My connection speed is pretty antique right now.”
“You want me to look at it?” asked Marisa. “Anja and I have pretty hardcore antivirus setups, most of which we built ourselves. We might be able to do something your software can’t.”
“Thank you,” said Alain, “but I don’t like other people tinkering around in my head. I think I’ve found a solution, but even if I’m working at full speed again, this is not going to be a fast job. We’re either downloading petabytes of data, which will take hours over Wi-Fi, or we’re searching for a very specific folder—maybe even a specific file—and then downloading that. That’s going to take way more than twenty minutes.”
“How much more?” said Bao.
“An hour?” said Alain. “Maybe two? How long does the gala last?”
“From eight p.m. until two or three in the morning,” said Anja. “So we have time, we just can’t have Bao missing for more than a few minutes of it.”
“He could leave the tablet and then go back for it later,” said Marisa. “Ten minutes at the beginning, and ten more right before we leave.”
“That means I’ll have to sneak through security twice,” said Bao, “which doubles the chance that security will notice and the mission’s a bust.”
“Yes,” said Anja, her eyes slitted. “Call it a mission again.”
“What if we never go back for the tablet?” asked Marisa. “We can pull all our data over the Wi-Fi, and you only have to sneak away once to set it up.”
“I don’t like leaving evidence behind when I steal from all-powerful megacorps,” said Bao.
Marisa shrugged. “We could rig it to . . . explode or something, I don’t know.”
“We’ll never get explosives past the security scan,” said Alain.
“Then we could just brick it,” said Marisa. “Set it up to wipe itself clean when we’re done with the transfer.”
“Unless it literally melts itself, it’ll still have traceable data on it,” said Anja.
“Not to mention physical evidence,” said Renata. “Even if everyone who handles that tablet wears gloves, it’ll still collect some fallen skin cells, maybe bits of hair—any one piece would be more than enough for a DNA test to connect it straight back to us.”
“Come on,” said Marisa. “There’s got to be a way to make this work.”
“I . . . ,” said Bao. He paused, just for a moment, then shook his head. “No. There’s no way.”
“Bao,” said Marisa. She knew him too well: he’d definitely thought of a way to do it.
“It’s impossible,” Bao insisted. “You have to have somebody who can get into the building, and then out of the pa
rty, with everyone seeing them but also not noticing they’re gone. It’s impossible.”
“Bao . . . ,” said Anja.
“No,” said Bao, but he looked away from them as he said it.
Marisa nodded, staring at him as she talked her way through the puzzle. “Someone who can fabricate a djinni ID, just like Bao can, but who Bao doesn’t want to endanger—” Her eyes went wide as she realized the answer. “Santa vaca.”
“No,” said Bao again, but this time he looked straight at her. “You can’t use them.”
“Use who?” asked Alain.
“Bao’s sisters,” said Marisa. “They’re perfect for the job.”
“Not a chance in hell,” said Bao.
“What makes them so perfect?” asked Renata.
“They’re twins,” said Marisa. “Perfectly identical.” She looked at Bao. “And thanks to a hack I did for them two years ago, they only have one ID between them. They share it back and forth. They can do all kinds of tricks with it—including having one of them at the party, and one at the hard line, without anyone ever knowing.”
“We won’t even need a tablet,” said Anja. “They have djinnis, so they can hook in directly.” She looked at Renata. “Less evidence, less chance of getting caught.”
“Will this work?” asked Alain. He looked at Bao. “Can they do it?”
“It’ll definitely work,” said Bao. “And they definitely have the skills to pull it off.” He looked at Marisa. “But if anything happens to them . . .” He leaned forward, enunciating clearly. “Nothing can happen to them.”
“I have some devices we can use to help cover your tracks,” said Alain. “In case anything goes wrong.”
Marisa raised an eyebrow. “How do you get all these ‘devices’ if you’re living in monastic poverty?”
“He’s got contacts,” said Renata. “Never tells me who they are.”
“She’s a mercenary,” said Alain.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” said Bao.
“You didn’t ask a question,” said Alain, “you just demanded something.”
“Then I’ll demand it again,” said Bao. “Nothing can happen to my sisters.”
“You have my word,” said Alain, standing up. He offered his hand, and after a moment Bao shook it.