The Child Thief 4: Little Lies

by Bella Forrest

  I looked from Nathan to Corona, and back again. Debriefed us? What we saw in where?

  Then I remembered our mission into the Authority’s compound and the things Gabby had told us the Little John operatives had said while we were unconscious. They’d acted as if they’d known what we would find in there, but only up to a point, she’d said. As if they might have been expecting certain aspects but hadn’t known for sure.

  And at some point over the last week, I’d thought about that for a little bit too long, and come to one harrowing question: when our friends were arrested, had us running a mission to save them managed to play right into Little John’s hands, in terms of getting some of their people into a place they’d never been before?

  I narrowed my eyes at the memory and put one more tally under the heading of “Things Little John is Keeping Secrets About.” Then I put another mark under the heading of “Questions I Need to Ask.”

  They’d helped us get in, and they’d helped us get out again safely. We would be in that same jail or dead right now if they hadn’t swooped in. But I hated being used. And I hated being kept in the dark.

  “We’ve questioned both Alexy and Zion, who were with them,” Corona answered. “I didn’t think the others would have much to add, and we’ve been rather busy.” She glanced meaningfully at her watch and tipped her head expectantly at him. “And we also don’t have time to stand around discussing this right now. We are on a deadline.”

  Nathan shook himself and nodded. “Of course. As I was saying,” he said, turning back to us. “The Ministry will almost inevitably assume we triggered that breach at Asus. It’s lucky you got Myrna out of there, as she would have been punished for it. But the breach happened, so the Ministry will be following their standard protocol of reviewing and updating their systems to search for anything we might have done to get in. It will mean their systems are down for a short period of time on a given day. Most important, however, is that they also replace the acting execs of each holding center with whoever is next in the pecking order.”

  “How will you know when their systems are down? And how do you know it’s happening at all?” Nelson asked.

  I could see the wheels turning in her head as she ran through the details he’d given so far, and I was certain that she already had at least three different options for what Nathan had said he wanted to accomplish. Nelson had always been the planner in our smaller group, and she’d always been a big believer in threes: one main plan, one plan B, and one plan for in case everything else went directly to hell.

  She’d also told me, though, that Nathan could run circles around her when it came to hacking and planning. So, I turned back to him to see how he would answer her questions.

  “We have an inside contact at the head office of the Ministry,” he said without pausing. “She’s feeding us as much information as she can. Of course, it’s not as much as we would like. She has to be careful about being caught, after all. But she gives us as much as possible. In this case, that includes the time and date of the system reboot.”

  “The infamous Aurora?” I asked.

  Nathan nodded. “A code name, of course. But yes.”

  “So the plan is…” I reminded him.

  “The systems in all of the holding centers across the country will be down for a span of about twenty minutes,” he said. “During that time, our teams will get into the computer rooms of the holding centers and infect their hardware and software with an undetectable and untraceable virus that will build us a back door into their systems. From there, we’ll be able to get a better idea of what they’re doing, and what their timeline is.”

  Nathan looked around at us all, his expression growing grim, his words hanging in the air like a black fog. But I found I had no further questions after that, and I guessed no one else did, either.

  33

  “Let me get this straight,” Nelson said that night when we were back in our suite of rooms. “The moment Corona had Myrna open that door it triggered some sort of security breach red flag for the Ministry?”

  Kory, Jace, Ant, Abe, Alexy, and Gabby had also crowded into our room, and turned from her to me, as if expecting me to have an answer.

  Honestly, it was more than somewhat crowded, and the expectations made me feel even more claustrophobic. But none of us had wanted to be alone, even after a full day spent together. So, after a drawn-out dinner, everyone followed Nelson and me to the room we were sharing to discuss the day in more detail. We were now all sprawled across the beds, chairs, and floor, talking.

  “That’s not much of a surprise, considering we were there when the alarms went off,” I interrupted. “And we heard the soldiers coming after us. Even though they never really appeared, which still seems… odd.”

  Nelson narrowed her eyes. “Corona knew exactly what she was doing when she insisted on that part of the tour. And I suspect she went into the holding center with that very thing in mind. She just hadn’t told Myrna. As far as Nathan and Corona were concerned, though, this plan was set in motion a long time before we ever entered Asus.”

  “But the Ministry doesn’t know exactly what we did, or how we did it,” I continued. “Because they didn’t catch us. So that means their protocol is to do a specific update across the board, regardless of what sort of infiltration they suspect. It doesn’t sound like that update includes punishing any employees who might have just let us in, so they must not suspect there are spies in their midst. Right? So the Little John plants in the holding centers are safe. Right?”

  “Right now, they just know someone went through a door,” Kory said from his side of the room. “How would they even know it was a security breach? Surely they have people going through that door all the time.”

  “Probably not without the right security clearance, though, and not without authorization,” Gabby said. “You have to remember, Kory, we’re dealing with the Ministry, here. They might be attached to a hospital, but I bet they still schedule their trips into it very carefully and have it all on record somewhere. Someone going through without clearance, and without notifying anyone ahead of time, and on top of that, going through with a high-level donor in tow? That had to break about fifty rules. If not more.” She ended the statement with a cock of her head and an aloof tone which would have made me laugh if she weren’t right on the mark.

  “And as Nathan said, the Ministry assumes Little John is constantly looking for a way to get to them,” Jace added. “If they’ve truly been fighting incursions from this organization for over twenty years, it’s got to be a major part of any decision they make at this point. Nathan’s right: they’ll be waiting for Little John to try to take advantage of the systems being down.”

  Nelson frowned, and I could almost hear her next statement, because I’d been thinking about it too. How had Little John become so powerful, and so active, that they were able to challenge the government like this? From everything we’d seen, they were a legitimate second option to living in the real world. Nathan had set up his own form of society and seemed to be running his own version of government here. He was actively re-educating people he’d… transferred… from the world outside. He had more power and money than any private citizen should have, and he was using it for, well, for something. If he wasn’t building an army, what was he doing?

  And if he was building an army, what was he planning to do with it?

  It was a query I knew we were going to have to deal with at some point, if only because we were now neck-deep in whatever Nathan was doing.

  “So, if they assume the breach was Little John,” Nelson said, “it makes sense for them to think we kidnapped one of their employees and are now extracting all sorts of information from her. Passwords, staff rotations, and the like. In line with their protocol, they rearrange their executive group to get rid of potential weak spots, reset their systems to get rid of any potential breaches, reset passwords, plus reprogram the computers with a new version of their security protocols.”


  “If they have the ability, it wouldn’t surprise me if they somehow redesigned their entire building to get rid of the floor plan Myrna knows,” Ant added.

  “And Nathan is sending us in to interrupt that process,” Gabby said. “I figure they’ll be giving us something pre-designed to worm into the resetting system. Probably a thumb drive or something we just need to plug in to a computer in the holding center. Seems pretty cut and dried to me.”

  We all looked at her at the same time, wearing what must have been identical expressions of disbelief. Breaking into a Ministry holding center, getting into their computer room, and inserting a flash drive within the limited time given to us by the security update, all while not getting caught or being killed by the Authority soldiers who would inevitably be roaming the place, was anything but cut and dried.

  “And this is all to get control of the Ministry’s computers?” Jace asked, staring at Gabby as if he was wondering what sort of creature she was.

  “This is to build a back door into the systems those computers run off, so we can go in and look around,” Nelson corrected. “Since Little John’s time in the auction site didn’t give them anything valuable.”

  “I don’t think they were even in the auction site to get anything other than information on the auction site,” I said. “This Artemis Protocol doesn’t sound like it’s a brand-new plan. It sounds like it’s a twenty-year-old plan. And that auction site was a recent discovery.”

  Nelson nodded. “In which case I’m guessing this is a lot more complex than they’ve told us so far. Twenty years and their grand scheme is setting off a security protocol and sneaking in with a thumb drive? Come on. That’s a slow Saturday night at my house.”

  We stared at each other, and then, as one, turned to Alexy.

  “Alexy, you know anything else about this?” I asked sharply. “Anything you’re not telling us? Because I think it’s a little late in the game to be keeping Nathan’s secrets.”

  She shrugged. “I know what you know, Robin. I know the Ministry has made a career out of stealing babies and selling them to the people who can afford to pay the price. I know it’s killing the people who lose their children, and that it’s slowly robbing the lower class of their identity. I know we were never given a choice in the matter. And I know, just like you do, what it’s like to have been affected by that process as a kid. I also know, just like you do, and like Nelson does, and like thousands of other people do, what it’s like to lose your own baby. To see those suits walking through the door, and realize what they’re there for, and to feel your stomach drop through the floor and your heart break into a million pieces you’ll never be able to put together again.” She stopped and swallowed heavily, trying to gather herself.

  When she started speaking again, it was in a much more subdued tone—one walking the edge of tears.

  “I know I’d do damn near anything to stop those holding centers from existing. To bring down the Ministry. And no, I don’t know Nathan’s plan, but I’ve known him long enough to know that if he and Corona have spent years coming up with it, it’ll work. If they say this will help to stop the Ministry, I believe them. And I’m all in.”

  I kept my mouth shut at that. Everything she said was true. Nathan was trying to take down the Ministry, in one way or another. We’d all been scarred by the kidnapping of children, whether we were the children who had been kidnapped or we’d lost babies ourselves, or both in my case.

  Alexy was right. We all had a stake in this. Nathan was fighting a fight we could all get behind. We needed to stop picking him apart and looking for reasons to distrust him, and start adding to the conversation in a way which would guarantee our success.

  “The team going into Smally will be Nelson, Kory, Jace, Alexy, Robin, and Gabby,” Nathan said from the front corner of the conference room.

  “Wait, what?” Nelson asked. “Gabby’s only sixteen. Is this really the sort of mission she should be going on?”

  Despite my acceptance of Gabby being a part of our team, honestly, the same question was running through my mind.

  Nathan paused, giving Nelson a look. “It’s a good question, and the answer’s yes,” he replied after a beat. “Normally someone so young wouldn’t be our first choice”—he shot a grin in Gabby’s direction to take the sting out of that—“but in this case we don’t have much choice, since our other techs are all busy, on this mission or other, smaller tasks. I know you’ve used her before, and I know she came through for you. That’s enough reason for me. She’ll never be alone, and she won’t have to handle anything large by herself. At least, we hope. I regret the danger, but I don’t see a way around it. We need her.”

  With that, he turned back to the front of the room, and Nelson and I had to be satisfied with the answer.

  He’d set up one of the holograph machines and was using it to broadcast a 3-D rendering of the Smally camera feed at the front of the room. He turned it back and forth, so we could see the building, but the feed only showed the outside.

  He then switched to a set of rough blueprints, and I recognized the layout of the inside of Asus. At least, as much of the inside as we’d seen. We’d spent much of the trip back to Edgewood drawing what we’d seen, but I hadn’t imagined I’d see it in a 3-D, computer-generated format. One that looked almost real.

  Nathan turned the blueprint so that we were walking—floating?—through the front door, then passing the reception area’s desk and moving toward the hallway with the windows into the warehouses where they kept the children.

  “The layout will be the same as it was in Asus, so this part should look familiar to an extent,” he said from the corner.

  The computer rendering gave us shadows of the boxes where the children were kept in the holding centers. Just rough outlines—but enough to make me shiver, especially after having seen Nathan’s versions of nurseries.

  “At the end of this hallway, you’ll enter the door and find the computer room.”

  The door on the rendering swung open, and there we saw the computer room—or at least a rough sketch of it. Not that we needed more than that. We all remembered what it looked like.

  Here, though, we made a sudden turn to the left, toward a door I hadn’t seen when we toured Asus.

  “Myrna tells us there are other hidden doors in and out of the computer rooms,” he continued. “She took you through the door straight ahead, which led to the classrooms. The door to the right leads to administration offices and then proceeds into the staff quarters. The door we want, this one on the left, leads to the stairs and up to the executive offices on the second floor.”

  “Executive offices?” I asked. “Why would we need those? In fact, why do we need so many people on the team at all? Wouldn’t it be better to send techs?”

  Nathan hit pause on the computer simulation and brought the lights back up with a flick of his hand against the wall. He gave me a quick grin, which had the unexpected effect of making me want to please him, and nodded once.

  “You bring up a good point, Robin, and I’d expect no less of you. Here, then, is where I give you the rest of the plan. The truth is, we do need techs on this mission. And we’re sending some of our best. Savannah, Ajax, Lux, and Rio will be the main technical team. Gabby and Nelson, you will be our understudies, in case something goes wrong. The rest of you are going for a different reason.”

  “You’re splitting us up?” Jace asked, horrified. “Is that a good idea?”

  “And also,” I added, “is it a good idea to take both Jace and Kory? Their size is somewhat memorable.”

  “It’s necessary,” Nathan replied, answering my question first. “We need them for any heaving lifting. And splitting up is just as necessary. The security protocol is two-fold. The software update is the first part of it, and it gives us our opening. It will take the systems down, including the cameras, and allow for free movement through the building for just over twenty minutes. It will also allow, for that brief period, open access to t
he systems, during which time the techs will be able to upload our backdoor virus. The second aspect, however, is the replacement of all executive teams in each holding center.”

  “They’re going to kill their own people?” Gabby asked, aghast.

  Nathan smirked. “The government is ruthless, but they also don’t believe in wasting their resources. No, they don’t kill them. They simply collect them and take them back to Ministry HQ for questioning. It could be, after all, that they were the ones who allowed the breach in the first place.”

  “What does that have to do with us?” I asked.

  Nathan cracked his knuckles. “The Ministry has another protocol in place for that. They have a group of understudy controllers who sit right under the main executive controllers in the chain of authority. In this protocol, those UCs move into the executive positions via an automatic promotion process. The old execs are wiped from the system. The centers continue functioning seamlessly with the new execs in place.”

  “How do they know the understudy controllers aren’t the ones that have been compromised?” I asked, trying to keep my mind focused.

  “We really must move you into a leadership position as quickly as possible, Robin,” Nathan said warmly. “Your mind moves almost as quickly as mine.”

  I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable—until I saw Jace’s proud grin.

  “They know the UCs are not compromised because the highest level of executives are the only ones who can move without any supervision in the holding centers,” Nathan continued. “They are the only ones who would have access to get an outsider in.”