Devious Origins

by Thad Phetteplace

  The rest of the planning session was subdued and tense, but we hammered out a plan. We agreed to meet back at the lair at 8:30 the next morning, and then called it a night. I would have to blow off my morning Computer Architecture class to do it, but I assured them I would be there. There was no way I was going to let them down.

  I slept fitfully, but I eventually did sleep. My dreams were turbulent and disjointed. I remembered running. Sometimes it seemed like I was chasing someone. Other times I was being chased. Dee with a cold look in her eyes. Tilly asking me a question I couldn't quite hear. Homeless Joe warning me about demons. I woke feeling like there was something urgent I needed to do, something I needed to tell everyone, but I couldn't think what. I rubbed the weariness from my eyes and looked at the clock. Only a half hour before my alarm would go off. Might as well get up.

  My stomach was too unsettled for breakfast. I showered, grabbed some hot tea from the cafeteria, and caught an early bus to the factory. Dee was already there and dressed for the mission. Her outfit was similar to the lawyer disguise she had used at the courthouse, with subtle differences. She looked less glamorous, more... clerical. The bare concrete and brick of the lair begged to be filled with modular carpeting and cubicle walls to match her new look.

  “I see DualCore isn't here yet,” I observed.

  “No, and they won't be,” she answered, “They're working their end from their own lair. Better equipment, they said. I've never been there, but I imagine it's like something from the Matrix... all wires and tech and walls of displays. We'll meet Liz on the way to pick up my ID badge, but then she'll head back to help her brother.”

  “Got it. Anything we need to do before we head out?”

  “Yes, help me fit the cameras. I want to make sure they're aimed correctly and that the processor box doesn't show.”

  We concealed the cameras in a costume jewelry hair pin, ran the wires down through her hair, and hid the battery and processor box inside her jacket collar. We paired the camera processor with her iPhone via Bluetooth and verified the video from both cameras. I then logged both our phones into a video streaming service that would allow her to share the video with my phone.

  “How's your data plan?” I asked, “this could burn through a couple of gigabytes before we're done.”

  “I'll survive a few overcharges. Let's get going.”

  I set the video app to reduce the resolution to the shared video stream but made sure it would store a higher resolution copy locally. “OK, that should do it. I'm ready to go if you are.”

  We rocketed away from the factory on Martin with me hanging on for dear life as always. The scooter had been reassembled, but it still showed some scars on its paint job. Mechanically, though, it seemed sound enough. If anything, it was faster.

  We screeched to a halt in front of the Intergalactic. Dee sent a text message from her phone, and Liz emerged from the coffee house minutes later carrying two large coffees in travel mugs and a small manila envelope.

  “I thought you might need some mission fuel,” she said as she handed them over.

  “You are a saint,” Dee declared as she grabbed one of the mugs and took a big sip. “Oh yeah... that's the stuff.”

  “You want to be alone with that?” Liz joked. “How's the ID look? It's best I could do given the limited time.”

  Dee tore open the envelop and pulled out the badge. “This is great,” she declared, “it looks just like the real thing.”

  Liz beamed with pride. “Well OK then, I'm out of here. Good luck.”

  We stowed our coffee in Martin's cargo compartment and sped off. Dee stopped a couple of blocks away from the glass tower that was our target. She parked just around the corner behind a two story building housing a laundromat and a couple of nondescript retail stores. It completely concealed us from the office building containing the Freedom Birthright Foundation.

  “OK, this should be good. You stay here until I'm coming out. I'll let you know what door to meet me at.” She reached into a pocket then handed me a key ring with two keys on it. “You can keep those. One is for Martin and the other will get you into the Lair. You ready?”

  “Ready,” I assured her. My heart was pounding as if I was the one about to trespass and engage in corporate espionage.

  Dee positioned her Bluetooth headset, called me, and made sure we had a good connection. Her headset was tiny and white, designed to match her iPhone. Consequently, it was easily mistaken for a hearing aid. The microphone did not extend out as far as other models, which meant it had to be more sensitive and consequently picked up more background sounds. This was perfect for our purposes. I activated an app on my phone that would record all the audio. Later I could synchronize the audio to the video footage to create a complete record of the mission.

  “Well then, let's get to it,” Dee said. She checked her hair in one of the scooter's mirrors, adjusted her jacket, then turned and strode away down the sidewalk. I watched her recede and disappear around the corner before I thought to check the video feed again and verify that the cameras were still working.

  She walked briskly toward the glass tower, inserted herself into the tide of employees making their way inside. The forward camera showed the back of a gray haired man in a dark blue suit as they walked past the security desk and toward a large glass door. Mr. Blue Suit waved his ID badge at the RFID card reader as he approached the door. A small green LED on the reader lit up as the door slid open, and he walked through. Dee stayed close and waved her fake badge at the reader as she walked through before the door slid shut. Hopefully nobody noticed that the LED never lit.

  The Freedom Birthright Foundation occupied most of the eighth floor of the building, sharing the rest of the twelve story tower with a variety of law firms, an insurance company, and other businesses. Consequently, nobody took any notice of a newcomer among the crowd of employees filing into the elevators. For the next couple of minutes, the video feed mostly showed the back of someone's head on the front facing camera and imitation wood grain paneling on the rear camera. The elevator stopped at the eighth floor, and Dee followed two other people out into a hallway, around a corner, to another door with a card reader. She again successfully tailgated her way past the security door and into the belly of the beast.

  The Foundation mostly looked like any corporate office in America. Drop ceiling, rows of desks, low cubicle walls. Dee strode purposefully into the sea of cubicles, looking for her first target. She found it in a larger than average cubicle on the end of a row. The name plaque read Shelly Perkins, Office Manager. Dee walked up and rapped on the edge of one of the cube walls to get Shelly's attention. Shelly held up one finger in the universal 'just a minute' gesture and finished typing something into her computer before turning to face Dee.

  “Can I help you with something?” Shelly asked.

  “Oh, I hope so,” Dee replied, “I just started today, and I was told you could give copies of all the orientation documents.”

  “You should have received links to them in your email.”

  “Oh yes, I know, but I guess there was some problem setting up my network access, so I was told to just ask you. They even lent me a USB drive for you to copy them to.” Dee held out DualCore's Skeleton Key. With the gold chain and skull removed, it looked like any other USB thumb drive.

  Shelly sighed but took the drive and plugged it into her PC without hesitation. I held my breath as the tiny red LED blinked for about 20 seconds, half expecting some virus scanner or firewall software to pop up a warning screen, but nothing happened. The LED stopped blinking, and the PC did not even appear to recognize that it had been inserted.

  “Typical,” Shelly complained, “they gave you a bad USB stick. Leave it to our IT services to screw up your network access and give you a bad USB drive.”

  “Oh fudge,” Dee replied. I could almost image the pouting expression that accompanied her words. “Well, I'
ll return it and let them know it's broken.”

  Shelly yanked the skeleton key from her computer and handed it back. “I'll send these documents to a printer instead,” She stated, “it's at the end of the next row over, the one marked HP-27.”

  Dee thanked her and headed off in that direction.

  “Nicely done,” I said into my phone.

  “Oh good, you're still there,” she quietly answered, “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “I just didn't want to distract you. OK, so that's it, right? Time to head out?”

  “I'm not so sure about that, I might want to infect a few more, just in case. What does DualCore say?”

  “Give me a minute and I'll check,” I opened a text chat app and shot a quick message to the predetermined address.

  Package delivered. Hows it look?

  good. getting traffic. analyzing now.

  Need anything more from us?

  just a sec...

  low yield so far. can she get to server room?

  “They want to know if you can get to the server room,” I told Dee. I winced as I said it, because I knew trying for the server room would put her at greater risk, and I knew Dee would do it anyway.

  “Can do,” Dee replied. She walked up to another random office worker and asked, “excuse me, can you point me toward the server room?”

  The guy looked up from the stack of documents on his desk and answered, “down that hall, turn left, big glass door with a sign on it. You can't miss it.”

  Dee thanked him and headed that direction. As she walked she spared a glance at the various offices and conference rooms along her route. The video image bounced and swayed as her attention swung from one thing to another. A young woman making photocopies. A pair of young men having an animated conversation. A conference room with a dozen or so people in it, two of them struggling with a video projector. She eventually came to a glass door labeled Information Services as well Help Desk and Server Room in smaller letters. The door also had an RFID scanner on it.

  “Paranoid bunch, aren't they,” Dee observed. She was looking squarely at the scanner.

  “Maybe we should abort,” I suggested, “What you've done already might be enough.”

  “Don't worry, I got this.” She rapped on the door. Nobody came. She knocked again. When nobody answered the second time, she turned and strode further down the hall to another random cubicle. “Hi, sorry to bother, but can you help me?”

  The middle aged man seemed annoyed at first, but when he finished turning and saw Dee, he smiled. “You must be new here,” he replied.

  “Oh yes, it's my first day,” she answered. I could hear the smile in her voice. “They just sent me from Conference Room 4 because the video projector isn't working. I'm supposed to get someone from the help desk, but it seems my access card doesn't work. Could you call them for me?”

  “Well, I can't very well say no to a damsel in distress,” he replied as he scooped up his phone.

  “Oh thank you,” Dee gushed, “the big boss was really getting worked up about it.”

  “Oh, you must mean Pearson. Yeah, he tends to be a bit... excitable.” He grinned as if sharing a private joke, and Dee rewarded him with a giggle. It was quite unlike any noise I had ever heard from her before, but its effect was undeniable. The guy smiled brightly, and when he got the help desk on the phone, he spared no effort in convincing them of the seriousness of the problem. He scribbled something on a post-it note, then handed it to Dee. “That's the help desk ticket number they've assigned, and below that is my number if you need anything else.” He leaned over and said to her in a quieter voice, “I know how first days can be.”

  “Thanks, you're totally my hero,” she assured him, then turned and walked back in the direction of Information Services. As she approached the glass door, a young man flew out and bolted toward the conference room. Dee calmly caught the door before it swung completely shut and slid inside.

  She strode past the help desk area without slowing down. Several people looked up as she walked past, but nobody stopped her as she headed straight for the server room. Inside, it was all white surfaces and racks of equipment and bundles of cables. Dee walked down an aisle in between two rows of server racks, then rounded the corner and walked between the equipment racks and one wall of the server room. This gave her access to the backs of all the equipment in that row. It was a riot of power and Ethernet cables. She approached a cabinet with a particularly large bundle of Ethernet cables running to it.

  “This looks like a good place to start,” she whispered. She began methodically plugging the Skeleton Key into any available USB port, waiting for the LED to stop blinking before moving it to the next server.

  My phone vibrated. My incoming text messages showed a smiley face emoticon from DualCore.

  “Whatever you're doing, DualCore approves,” I informed Dee. She just continued moving the Skeleton Key.

  “Um, excuse me miss, what are you doing there?” Dee looked up to find a young man in a rumpled white shirt and a loosened tie glaring at her.

  “Oh good,” she exclaimed, “maybe you can help me. I'm working on the depreciable asset audit for accounting, but some of these asset tag numbers aren't on my list.” She got out her iPhone and pretended to consult something on it. “Could you tell me what this big server here does?”

  “That's the main storage array for the document archival system,” he answered, then shook his head and said, “You really can't be here without approval. I'll need you to come with me.”

  “Oh didn't you get the memo? This was all scheduled weeks ago. ”

  “I don't remember any memo.” Doubt crept into his expression. “I'm kind of behind on my email, though.” He seemed paralyzed in a moment of indecision, then said, “Come with me to my desk. I'll just check for that memo quick, and then maybe I can help you.”

  As Dee followed the IT guy, I frantically hammered out a text message to DualCore.

  Dee caught. Trying to bluff way out.

  police? private security?

  IT staff. Need fake email for cover story.

  good thing we own their mail server now.

  I explained the details of the situation as briefly as possible. DualCore asked who the email should go to. I relayed the request to Dee.

  “You've being ever so helpful,” Dee said cheerfully to her captor, “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Bob. Bob Raynard.”

  They approached Bob's desk. He sat down and logged in to his PC. I frantically keyed Bob's name into a text message to DualCore and suggested the email be from someone name Pearson.

  “I'm not finding anything,” Bob said as he scrolled through his recent messages.

  “They might have sent it a while ago,” Dee suggested.

  got it. altering an existing message.

  Bob keyed a series of search terms into his email program. Suddenly he said, “There it is. How did I miss that before?”

  I let my breath out almost explosively. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath. Bob and Dee ambled back into the server room and walked along the backs of the servers. Dee pretended to peer at asset tags and consulted her phone while Bob described what each piece of equipment did.

  “I think I've got everything I need,” Dee finally said. She thanked Bob and headed out. “OK, Barry, pick me up at the west entrance in five minutes. I'm on my way down.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief and started to answer, but then I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.

  “I am thinking you need to come with us, yes?” My heart froze as recognition hit me. I knew that voice. I turned and confirmed my fear.

  It was The Mook.