A Game of Chance

by Emma Shortt

  The words fell before Chance could think to stop them. “You don’t have one?”

  She tilted her head again. “I wouldn’t be here with you if I did, Chance.” A pause and then, “And you?”

  “I wouldn’t be here, either.”

  Chance knew then, with those words, that they were practically admitting that this was a date. But it couldn’t be a date. Not with what was happening. Not with X-Tech. Not with the lies.

  He leaned back in his chair, trying in some futile way to break the connection between them. It, of course, would not be broken. The tension remained. Chance felt it even as he knew that he had to find some way to stop it.

  “How did you get on with hacking into my site?” he asked.

  Meg leaned back slightly, too. She ran her finger around the rim of her water glass. Chance noticed that her nails matched her lips. Hadn’t they been blue earlier in the day? “You already know the answer to that.”

  “I guess I do,” he said.

  “Kate is…not happy.” Meg shook her head. “She’ll carry on until she cracks it. She’s probably working on it right now.”

  And if anyone could crack it, Chance suspected Meg or her friend would. What would they find? Chance had locked that damn site down with just a few keystrokes. He’d hidden the fact that the domain had only been registered in the early hours of the morning. He’d bounced the IP address around so many servers it was impossible to trace. Even if Kate got in, she’d find only the text that he’d written last night…the date of the posting of that text was scrubbed as well.

  “She won’t find a back door,” he said.

  “A back door?”

  There was a curious note to Meg’s voice. Chance picked up on it immediately. Dammit, he had to be careful. “Isn’t that what you call it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Meg said. “It is, but how do you know what a back door is?”

  Chance gave as nonchalant shrug as possible. “I’ve been doing my research.”

  “Via the nerd who hired you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still won’t tell me who it is?”

  “No,” Chance said. “But I’ve had a few thoughts about how we can move this investigation along.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m all ears.”

  “If you truly believe that the competition is where your work was stolen, then that is where we have to start.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “How did you hear about the competition?” he asked.

  “I was invited,” she said. “An email from the company through one of the forums I’m a member of. It was completely out of the blue, just dropped into my inbox one day.” She sighed. “I was so excited.”

  Chance had found no record of any emails. “You still have the email?”

  “Of course, but it’s totally generic, there’s no contact details on there or anything. It came through the forum, just gave a time and a place.”

  “And the other people who were there? They were invited, too?”

  She nodded. “We all were. We spoke about it because none of us had ever heard of a direct invitation to one of the X-Tech competitions before. We figured they were in some of the forums, watching developers, keeping an eye on who was doing what.”

  X-Tech did no such thing. Chance did, though. Often.

  “And who won?” he asked. “If it was a competition, someone had to have won it, right?”

  Meg frowned. “No one did that I know of.”

  “We need to be sure of that,” Chance said. “And the best way to be sure is to speak to whoever was at that competition. Send me a list of whoever you remember being there, real names, usernames, whatever you have. I’ll do some digging tonight on those names and put together a final list for us to work from.”

  “You’re going to track down and interview all of the nerds?” Meg asked.

  “I am going to track them down,” Chance said. “But we’re going to interview them all.”

  She nodded even as her frown deepened ever so slightly. “Are we sure that’s a good idea, Chance?” she asked.

  Chance knew what she was asking. Of course he did. It might have taken him a decade or more to understand the basic subtleties of human interaction, but with Meg it seemed to come that much easier.

  She understood what was happening here.

  So did he.

  And, issue or not, there was absolutely no avoiding it. They needed each other to get to the bottom of what was happening with X-Tech. Chance just had to make sure that they didn’t end up getting to the bottom of other things, too.

  Chapter Ten

  Meg was fizzling with excitement the next morning as she made her way into work, and it wasn’t just because she’d finally completed the Native Fortress level on Crash Bandicoot, but because she’d woken up to a message from Chance. He’d tracked down the first of their nerds, an interview was set up for this afternoon, and he wanted her to come along.

  Meg had put quite a lot of thought into what was likely to happen at that interview and had gone for a professional look of tight black trousers, a crisp white shirt, and a pair of knee-high leather boots. She had also tamed her hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck and had only one solitary white bow atop it. All in all, she was as prepared as she could be from a clothing perspective.

  Where the interview was concerned? And Chance? Meg wasn’t sure what she could do to ready herself. She had a suspicion that this was going to be another of those times where the cookie simply crumbled in whatever way it wanted, and she was okay with that.

  She nodded to herself as she pushed open the door to KIT. The theme tune sounded out at the exact time as someone let out an expletive. Meg shifted to the left to see Kate emerge from behind her row of monitors.

  “Katie?”

  “What time is it?” Kate demanded.

  Meg looked down to where her fitness tracker lived on her left wrist. It had been a birthday present from her mother. Meg didn’t really do exercise, at least not the physical kind, but she came from a family of fitness junkies, and they were always trying to get her to sign up to one of their latest group runs. Meg always refused. The fitness tracker was the only concession she gave to their demands, with all the results shared on a forum that Meg had created. She couldn’t deny that it was cool to see a readout of her entire family’s heart rate, step count, and even their calorie burn. She gave the tracker a shake, and the thing woke up. Her heart rate was higher than usual, she noted, and her step count was below what she’d like it to be at this point in the morning. That tended to happen when she spent the first hour of the morning on her PS4.

  “Meg?”

  “It’s just after ten,” Meg said.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t be in until midday,” Kate said.

  “I’m teaching a Python class at half past,” Meg said as she walked across to Kate. She breathed in. Something smelled…weird.

  “I forgot about that.”

  “Kate, does something smell funky in here,” Meg began but stopped a moment later.

  Kate was wearing yesterday’s clothes. There were several mugs spread around her desk space, an empty pizza box, and several candy wrappers. She also had three laptops running at once. Meg could see lines of code whizzing across all three screens.

  “You’ve been here all night!”

  “Not all night,” Kate said quickly. “Just…most of it.”

  “But…” Meg shook her head. “Why?”

  “We need to talk,” Kate said.

  Meg’s chest tightened. She was sure if she looked down, her heart rate would be on the rise. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “What’s happened? What do you need me to do?”

  She came around the desk, dropping her satchel on it, and pulled Kate forward. Her friend smelled of anchovies and lemonade. It was not a particularly pleasant smell.

  “First,” Kate said. “Do not tell Will I’ve been here all night. He thinks I was at your place binge watch
ing Narcos.” She shook her head. “You know how he gets.”

  “Worried,” Meg said. “And so he should. This place might have shutters and an alarm, Katie, but it’s still in the business district, and there’s still crime here. Also,” Meg added, “we finished season two a week ago.”

  “Will doesn’t know that,” Kate said. “And I closed the shutters. Opened them an hour ago. And I set the alarm.”

  “You totally did not set the alarm,” Meg replied. “You and I both know it. Now, what was so important that you’re lying to your beloved? That you had to be here all night? You have plenty of processing power at your place.”

  “Not enough,” Kate said. She shook her head. “There wasn’t enough here, either.” She shook her head again. “I’ve failed.”

  “Failed…I don’t…” It clicked then, and Meg scowled. “Chance’s site? You’ve been here all night trying to get into Chance’s site?”

  “Yes.”

  “But…I messaged you last night, and you didn’t say a word.”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” Kate said.

  Meg sighed. “Katie…”

  “But I can’t get in,” Kate said. “I’ve tried everything I know. There isn’t a single door.”

  “You don’t need to worry about it, Kate,” Meg said. “It isn’t that important. Definitely not important enough for you to have spent all night here.”

  “I think we should worry about it, Meg,” Kate said. “I really do.” She paused. “It’s not even because of what I’ve found but because of what I didn’t.”

  Meg tilted her head as she stared at her friend. As well as looking fairly disheveled and miserable, Kate looked worried. Meg made a snap decision. She reached into her satchel and pulled out her travel-sized bottle of No 5. She spritzed Kate before her friend could stop her.

  “Meg!”

  “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “Coffee,” Meg said. “You need it. You need the Chanel, too. You smell weird.”

  “I smell even weirder now,” Kate snapped. “And aren’t you supposed to be holding a class on basic Python in twenty minutes?”

  “It’ll hold,” Meg said. “Besides, the sooner our new students get used to my…creative interpretation of time, the better.”

  Meg strode to the door and held it open for Kate. Kate shrugged her sweater on as she passed by. Meg pulled the door shut, locked it up, pulled her Android out of her satchel, and shot a group message to the students. It encouraged them to think about the power of coffee before a class, as well as the meaning of time itself.

  The coffee shop was in the same retail complex as KIT. Meg often felt that she gave them way too much of her paycheck. She shooed Kate over to their usual riverside table as she went and placed their order. The cute barista gave Meg a winning smile. Meg returned it even as another smile filled her mind.

  “Drink that,” Meg said, as she placed an espresso in front of Kate a few minutes later. “Then, tell me why we should be worried.”

  Kate downed the espresso in one gulp. She shuddered a moment later. She did not respond well to strong coffee. Still, it would keep her going for the hour or so it would take them to have this conversation and then for Kate to get home. Meg would fly solo in the store today.

  “He has government-level security on his site,” Kate eventually said. “No, that’s not even true. Given the way I’ve honed my skills over the last year working on the game, I could crack most government sites given enough time.” She paused. “But, Meg, this is something else. It’s like what I’d expect to see in a big tech company.” She paused again. “It’s almost like what we did see when we poked the X-Tech servers.”

  That had been in the days following X-Tech’s announcement. Meg had been under no illusion that she or Kate would be able to get into the X-Tech network, but they’d decided to have a scooch around, to see what they were up against. They’d withdrawn after only a handful of minutes. X-Tech was locked tighter than any network Meg had ever encountered.

  “You think the guy who did Chance’s security is connected to X-Tech?” Meg said after a moment.

  “No…I don’t think that…” Kate rubbed her head.

  Meg’s stomach tightened at the action. “Kate, you have a tone.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was thinking,” she said. “What if Chance is?”

  Meg started. “Connected to X-Tech?”

  “Yes.” Kate rubbed her head again as she pushed her glasses up her nose. They weren’t slipping. It was one of Kate’s habits. She tended to do it more often when she was worried or stressed. “We don’t know how he got into X-Tech Towers,” she said.

  “Well, no, I never got around to asking him…I messaged you that last night.”

  “You didn’t ask him what he was trying to find in their local files, either.”

  “Kate…”

  “He hasn’t given you any information at all yet, Meg,” Kate said. “But from the conversation highlights you messaged me, it seems that you’ve given him plenty.”

  “Kate…”

  “So, I got to thinking,” Kate said. “What if Chance is working for X-Tech? What if he tracked you down so that he could find out what you know? The moment it occurred to me I knew I had to get into that site. I thought if I could track down his email address we could see if there’s been any communication between them.”

  “Chance is not working for X-Tech,” Meg said quickly, but even as she did a nasty feeling shivered up her spine.

  “We’re talking about a company that stole your work,” Kate said.

  “Yes…”

  “And they know they did that, and they know that you’re very pissed about it. They have records of you trying to contact them, to lodge a complaint with them. You even threatened to go to the press.”

  “It was an empty threat,” Meg said quickly. “We both know that a national site would never have taken the story. It would have ended up on an obscure conspiracy site somewhere, and my credibility would have been shot to shit.”

  “We know that,” Kate said. “But does X-Tech want to take that risk?”

  “So…they hire a private investigator to what? To stop me?” Meg asked. “What would even be the point?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “That’s why it doesn’t make sense. But I do know that you have to be careful with him. At least until we know more about him. Or until we can breach that damn site.”

  Meg looked down at her latte. The little sun that the barista had created from chocolate sprinkles was melting into the milk. It looked…sad. Suddenly, Meg felt the same way. No, that was wrong. She didn’t feel sad; she felt anxious. Could Kate be on to something? Could Chance really be working for X-Tech? Could he really be working with her for some nefarious reason?

  “I like him, Kate,” she said after a moment.

  “You don’t know anything about him—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Meg said. “There’s a chemistry there. Last night…” She shook her head. “Something just seemed to click between us. I didn’t think it would at first. I was so nervous. I wasn’t watching my words. I was all over the place. But then, we started talking, and we were moving closer to each other, and I thought to myself, I like this man, I really like him.”

  “You’re attracted to him,” Kate began, but Meg waved her words away.

  “It’s more than that. I mean, yeah, there is an attraction, a powerful one, but there’s something else, too. I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it. I feel like I should know, but I don’t. It’s just there.”

  “You always do this,” Kate said.

  “Do what?”

  “Jump in feet first,” she said.

  “Yes,” Meg agreed. “I do. And”—she held up a hand—“I know it rarely works out. Well, it hasn’t worked out yet, or I’d be all loved up like you, wouldn’t I? But this feels…different.”

  “Different how?” Kate d
emanded.

  Meg couldn’t answer her, not least because Kate was right. It didn’t make sense. She’d met the man just a couple of days ago, but already she wanted to see him again. She said as much to Kate, and her friend sighed.

  “Oh, Meg.” She reached out and took her hand. They wrapped their fingers together. The sunlight fell upon them. It was apt in a way that made Meg’s heart squeeze.

  “What do you want to do?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t know,” Meg said.

  “Do you want to hear what I think you should do?”

  “Always.”

  “Okay,” Kate said. “In the end, it comes down to this. You mustn’t forget what is happening. What all this is for.”

  “The work,” Meg said.

  “Exactly.”

  “The financial gain.”

  “Well, yes…”

  “The filthy lucre.”

  Kate squeezed their hands. “Meg, stop being so flippant.”

  “I’m always flippant when I’m nervous,” Meg said.

  “Yes, but you’re not being nervous about the right things.” Kate squeezed their hands again. “You have worked so hard for so long. I can still remember the day when you told me about the ants, about what everyone before you had missed. I knew then, I still know, that what you found on that day is going to secure your place in history. It’s going to put your name in the hallowed halls of mathematics for years and years to come.”

  “Wikipedia, too,” Meg whispered.

  “We’re already on Wikipedia.”

  “Because we added ourselves.”

  “We did,” Kate agreed. “But this is different. You’ll be up there as one of only two people who have claimed the Millennium Prize.”

  The Millennium Prize…Meg shivered. It had been her dream for so long. Seven mathematical problems. All of them with a one-million-dollar prize attached to whoever could solve one of them. The money wasn’t even the draw to Meg. The puzzle that she was trying to solve, that she had almost solved, was worth a hell of a lot more than that to the world. Just as she’d tried to explain to Chance, it had far-reaching consequences in so many areas, but the cryptosystems were what interested Meg the most. Data had become so important in the world, and so many companies and governments used it in manipulative ways, to manipulate people. If Meg could complete the puzzle, if she could claim the prize, she could do something about that, make things safer, make people safer.