I held a vape pen between my fingers. To any casual observer, I was just a teenage plumber taking my break. I certainly appeared that way to the janitorwho kicked the basement door open from the inside, pushing a cart brimming with trash bags.
“Here,” I said, putting my vape away and holding the door open for him.
“Thank you,” said the janitor gratefully. He was an older man with grizzled gray hair and a kind face. I hoped he wouldn’t get in trouble for this.
As I held the door, I smoothed a bit of duct tape across the latch bolt. When it closed, the lock couldn’t activate.
There would be an alarm if it remained unlocked for too long. But I didn’t need more than two minutes.
The janitor vanished back inside.
I counted to thirty, and then I tugged on the small piece of tape. The door opened soundlessly.
I was in.
Within was a basement corridor brimming with cleaning equipment, boxes, and an elaborate system of pneumatic tubes. That had been in the mole’s report: the old tubes had been left over from the building’s stint as a bank. Stenc had decided to repurpose them for communication within his office. He thought they couldn’t be hacked.
I twisted my vape pen. Instead of smoke, a slender blade emerged.
Turns out, you can hack pneumatic tubes. You just need a sharp enough knife.
I grabbed a spare canister, yanked it open, and jammed a preprinted work order inside. I’d stolen the office header from Stenc’s website and created apassable forgery last night. Now, I stuck the canister into the hole I’d sliced. It vanished with a whoosh.
I turned and hurried toward the door, yanked the tape free, and stepped outside. The door locked behind me.
Picking up my toolbox, I walked around to the front of the building. By now, the ISD surveillance team would be panicking. Their cameras had a perfect view of the building’s entrance… and I was officially off mission.
Let them panic. I was finally having fun.
I walked through the front doors.
“Hi,” I said, stepping up to the security checkpoint. “I’m Augusta Pine. With—”
The guard sounded bored. Day security must not have been told of the recent break-in. “Step through the scanner.”
Light danced across my hand and I saw the words “Augusta Pine” appear on the holographic screen. The guard retrieved a canister and glanced down at the forged work order that said an outside plumbing company had an appointment. He didn’t even give the paper a second glance, and why would he? It had come up through official channels. “Did Anderson finally call you about the second-story bathroom?”
I nodded.
He typed something into the computer. “I’m giving you access to the building for a two-hour period,” he said. “Go on in.”
I gave him a polite, disinterested smile and went on in.
It was rather anticlimactic, if I was being honest.
I hurried into an elevator. There were two young employees chatting to each other. They didn’t even look at me.
I stepped out onto Stenc’s floor. From days of surveillance, I knew Stenc left his office to get lunch at noon. And I highly doubted he left his rail gun not-dog active during office hours. He couldn’t risk stray assistants and interns being accidentally murdered. If only to protect his insurance rates.
I pushed open the office door and stepped inside. Empty, just as I predicted.
I squatted beside the not-dog. Quickly, I pulled the ringware from my finger, then pressed it into a slot along the robot’s back. I’d written a program last night with Edgar’s help. This particular brand of robot dog didn’t have Bluetooth or Wi-Fi capabilities. Technically anything with wireless connections could be hacked. So all new commands and programming had to be entered manually.
“Run program ‘It Follows,’” I whispered. My older sister had adored old horror films; we spent countless nights watching them after I cracked the parental code on our family TV.
This hack was formatted to look like a firmware update. The dog’s anti-virus software wouldn’t flag it. The update took about thirty seconds to install. Once it was finished, I picked my ring up and rose to myfeet. Then I pulled a note from my pocket and laid it on Stenc’s desk.
Deliver the rail gun schematics to the plumber’s van outside.
