The Child Thief 4: Little Lies

by Bella Forrest

  I pressed my lips together, trying to sort through that one. “But we got in without having access to the execs,” I finally said.

  “You got in because your team had an appointment to tour the facility,” he answered. “Not because you’d hacked the system. Not because you had the passwords. Not because you could clear the security points. There was nothing to connect you to the executives. Nothing whatsoever.”

  “I assume the rest of the team is going to be doing something with the execs, or you wouldn’t be going into that,” Nelson said promptly. “What aren’t you telling us? What does the executive exchange have to do with our mission? It’s not as though you’re going to somehow replace the execs with Little John operatives.”

  “Oh, but we are,” Nathan replied with a grin. “The UCs in each holding center are in fact LJ operatives. Plants in the centers. We’ve spent over a decade getting them to that point, to be prepared for this exact situation.”

  “So once this wipe happens, you’ll not only have a back door into the Ministry’s computer systems. You’ll also have plants in all of the executive positions,” I said slowly, mind reeling.

  Nathan nodded. “And the secondary team, disguised as Authority soldiers, will be escorting the old execs out of the holding centers, and bringing them back to Edgewood for questioning. The sector responsible for the debriefing at Ministry HQ will be informed that the Burchard Regime has requested a special-level debrief using their own private investigators, which they will not question. It is, I believe you might say, the perfect coup.”

  He waited a moment, and then, as if that hadn’t been enough to really blow our socks off, added, “Also, I should add that Smally is the holding center located closest to Chanley, our nation’s delightfully corrupt and false-faced capital. It is the ideal location to spy on the government and is our most important piece of this plan. All holding centers will be updated at the same time, and we’ll have multiple teams moving at once, but according to our research, Smally is the largest holding center and is therefore the hub for the system that runs the entire series of centers. We get into Smally’s system, we open a hole in the systems of all the holding centers. For that reason, I’ll be going with you to add some of my own tracers and tricks into the computer systems.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, and breathed slowly out through my nose.

  “What?” Jace said. “You’re coming with us? Why would you take that sort of risk? Why would you—”

  “That’s stupid, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Nelson added. “I understand that any Ministry holding in Chanley is important, but putting yourself directly in the line of fire puts your entire organization at risk.”

  I stared at Nathan, my mind reeling. He was going with us? No matter how important Smally was, Nathan was the head of Little John. He’d gone out of his way to maintain his safety for as long as I’d known him, excluding his little stunt as Montague. Why would he put himself at such risk now?

  He cast his gaze across the group, expression unreadable, and then blew out softly.

  “You’re right,” he finally replied. “And last month, last year, I would never have done something like this. Little John, and our mission, is far too important for me to potentially throw my life away. But I’ve spent the last twenty years hiding from the Burchard Regime. We finally have the Ministry where we want them, and Smally is the key to moving forward with our plans. If you fail at Smally, the entire operation will fail. This is too important for me to let you do it alone. I’m afraid I have no choice.” He gave us each a look and shrugged. “And maybe, just maybe, it’s something personal. A chance to punch back as myself and not from behind the anonymous mask of Little John’s leader.”

  I bit my lip, having no response to that, and noticed the rest of the group was silent as well.

  We had wanted to get into Little John’s inner circle to be able to fight the government more effectively. But the Artemis Protocol had made things become very real, very quickly. The time for words was over; it was time for action.

  34

  We spent the majority of the next morning prepping the logistics of the mission with Nathan, after which we met with Corona and Zion in the afternoon.

  Although we certainly knew more now, Corona and Nathan were still the only ones who had the whole story. This wasn’t to say they were unfair with their distribution of power. In fact, I’d noticed most of the people we met, from the chefs in the kitchen to the people running places like the Armory and the Toy Shop, were, for the most part, free to make their own decisions according to what they saw as best for the city and the organization. Everyone had an integral part to play, and they were all doing so with relative freedom.

  But they were also making those decisions based on what Nathan’s ultimate plan was. That was the part we still didn’t know, not really, although it felt as if it was coming up on us quickly. Whatever the deadline was, we were flying toward it, with Artemis as the first step.

  As part of our education, we learned more about Smally and its close relationship with the capital, Chanley. Officially, that city was the home of the government’s sprawling offices, auditoriums, and the capitol building where the Burchard Regime had its base of operations. I had never been there, and it had always seemed like a very distant idea to me. A place where the government did whatever it was they did and made whatever plans they made to keep our country ticking along. Now I revised that opinion. It was where the government put into place whatever laws it could think of to keep the country, and its people, under its thumb.

  It was a step I’d never taken before, but now I realized it was completely logical. Everything, from the strict class divisions, to the CRAS, and even to the apparent requirement of the rich taking on more children than they could have themselves, was a way for the government to dictate how we lived our lives.

  And now, I was going into the viper’s nest, sneaking into one of their main bases of operation.

  Our training with Nathan, in the morning, consisted of going through the computerized rendition of Smally again and again—and then again—until we could probably navigate the building with our eyes closed. We got through the computer room and moved on to the executive suites. The door on the left, the one we were to take out of the computer room, led directly to a set of stairs, which would take us up to the second floor, the floor that housed only the offices of the execs and their immediate staff.

  Once we were familiar with the layout and the surrounding area, Nathan broke down the plan into minute detail for us to remember.

  “How long do we have to prep?” Alexy asked, her normal sarcastic attitude put aside in favor of a deeply serious tone.

  Nathan glanced at her, then looked each one of us in the eye before answering. “We have today to complete your training. Two days from now, at midnight, the security update happens. We will spend the rest of today, most of tomorrow, and the morning of the next day preparing, and then we travel to the holding centers in the early evening.”

  “Two days,” I murmured. “Only two days.”

  “Only two days,” Nathan repeated. “So we’d better get a move on.”

  With a flick of his wrist, he drew a 3-D timeline stretching across the front of the conference room. “As I’ve mentioned before, we’ll have twenty minutes from when the systems go down to when they come back up again,” he said, drawing 12:00 at one end of the timeline and 12:20 at the other. “We’re going to have to move quickly, in perfect sync, to pull this off. We won’t have time to break in and get through the building after the systems go down. We have to already be in place in Smally when the update starts, so we can move immediately.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to let us just stroll in,” I responded. “Unless we’re posing as a donor and their team again? But that seems—”

  “Impossible,” Nathan confirmed. “After what happened at Asus, all tours are suspended until the system is updated. We’ll be getting into the building in disgu
ise, and ahead of when the systems will go down.”

  “How do you know your timeline is accurate?” Jace asked.

  “Aurora has given us that information, and we have no reason to question her sources, seeing as she’s the one in charge of scheduling the update.”

  Interesting. How exactly, I wondered, had they managed to get someone in such a high position in the Ministry? Had she been in Little John first, and been planted in the Ministry’s operations? Or had she already had the position and been turned by Little John after the fact?

  “If you have someone that deep in the Ministry’s headquarters, why can’t she just give you what you want? Couldn’t she plant the bug for you? Seems like she has the perfect position for it,” I asked.

  Nathan gave me a considering look, as if trying to figure out how much he could tell me. “Aurora can’t compromise her position, or she would lose all value,” he finally said. “Not to mention the risk it would be to her life. We need her to maintain her place and reputation in that office for a while longer before we take the risk of her being discovered.”

  I wondered what she was like, this woman willing to take her life into her hands in such a manner. If the Ministry found out what she was doing, I had no doubt they would kill her, waste of a resource or not. It would not likely be a pleasant death.

  “So how are we getting in?” Jace finally asked, breaking the silence between Nathan and me.

  “As a cleaning crew,” Nathan responded, bringing up a moving clip on the holographic device. It showed a cleaning crew dressed in standard white jumpsuits with an unclear motif printed on the back in green. “We’ve registered the appointment with the head operator of the holding center, and they’re expecting us.”

  “They’re going to let us in during their wipe?” I asked, confused.

  Nathan grinned at me. “We’ve convinced them it will be the least disruptive time for us to do an intensive deep cleaning of the whole building. After all, the building will be nonoperational during the reset. The children will all be shut in the warehouse. The teachers will not be present. The operational staff and administrative teams will have all been told to remain in the staff quarters or at their desks in preparation of implementing the new system. The only real movement will be the switching of the executive controllers, and the collection of the previous leadership crew. And since they’ll never actually see us leave as the cleaning crew, they won’t realize we’ve been there about five hours less than we should have been, were we to actually clean the building.”

  “Because we’re the ones collecting the execs, right?” Kory asked. “I assume we need to find Authority uniforms once we’re inside rather than walking in the door with them?”

  “According to our contacts, all holding centers have locker rooms in the basements containing a number of extra uniforms for both Ministry and Authority personnel. I don’t think I need to tell you why we’ll be cleaning the basement first.” He put a hand up in warning. “But it won’t be easy, and I don’t want any of you to think it will be. Part of the Ministry protocol includes a crew of legitimate Authority soldiers, who will arrive with the expectation that they collect the ex-executives to escort them to Ministry HQ. We will have to deal with those soldiers. We can’t have two groups of soldiers trying to escort the same execs. And we certainly can’t have the real soldiers seeing us and radioing their HQ about a problem.”

  Jace and I exchanged long, loaded glances. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d gone up against Authority soldiers. It would, however, be the first time we were expected to kill them when we found them. The idea brought with it a bone-deep dread. I’d killed one man already, but only because he’d been about to kill Jackie. In fact, at the time, I’d thought Jackie might already be dead.

  I’d killed the man responsible. Brought my gun up, sighted on his chest, and pulled the trigger with a cool, calm focus completely alien to me.

  I felt nauseous at the memory, the room going blurry as my blood pounded in my ears. In the dark hours of the night, I wondered how much of my soul I’d given away with that one action. But I’d done it to save my friend’s life, I reminded myself desperately, and that, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t!—regret. I’d have done the same thing a million times over.

  But killing someone just because they got in my way, or without the motivation of having to save someone?

  I wasn’t sure any of us were ready for that.

  “Due to distance, we’ll be traveling by airship. It will be docked a suitable distance away, with a pilot who keeps it running,” Nathan continued, ignoring the heavy silence that had fallen after his last statement, drawing lines on the 3-D timeline as he progressed in the plan. “The goal is to get in before the systems go down and get to the basement to remove the cleaning crew disguises and collect Authority uniforms. As one group we continue to the computer room, timing our entry for just before the system reboot. From there, Savannah, Ajax, Lux, and Rio will be in charge of building the back door, with Nelson and Gabby as support. I’ll be working on a few extras as well as helping with the main endeavor. Jace, Robin, Kory, and Alexy will split off to pick up the execs, keeping an eye out for the Authority team and any other Ministry security. Take them out of the picture, if necessary. Make sure you keep it quiet. You four will pose as the official team there to escort the execs out. Get them down to the computer room, secure our tech team, and then we all get the hell out of there. Our work on the system must happen within twenty minutes exactly, but we’ll have about ten minutes of wiggle room on either side of that to get ourselves in and out of the building. Any questions?”

  When no one answered, he reset the timeline and took a breath. “Now, we go through it again. And I hope you were listening, because this time around, we’re adding in times and personal actions.”

  The small beam of light shot into my face, and I blinked hard against it.

  “Robin, 11:55, where will we be?”

  It was our fourth time going through the plan. I barely had to think before I answered. “With the group in the main hallway leading to the computer room. We’ll all be dressed as Authority soldiers, courtesy of the uniforms we found in the basement.”

  Nathan gave a nod and then turned his laser pointer to Nelson.

  “Nelson, take us through the next five minutes.”

  She got up, donned the pair of gloves he’d left lying on the table, and reached out to manipulate the 3-D rendering of the holding center. She walked us forward through the hallway but stopped just outside the door into the computer room.

  “We wait outside the computer room until midnight,” she recited, voice monotone. “At that point the camera systems go down.”

  “And midnight happens… now,” Nathan said, keeping time on an old-fashioned stopwatch. “Jace, what next?”

  “Into the computer room,” he said. “At midnight, the systems go down, the cameras are off. We have free run of the building.”

  Nelson used the gloves to throw open the door of the computer room, and Jace continued his narrative.

  “Nathan, Savannah’s quartet, Gabby, and Nelson go to the right, to access the computers. Robin, Kory, Alexy, and I hold until we see you’re safe, and then we move to the door on the left.”

  “Right,” Nathan continued. “Nelson, if you please, the gloves.”

  She took them off and tossed them my way, and I quickly put them on and stood up. As I moved toward the rendering, I continued with our plan.

  “12:05,” I said, reaching out and grabbing at the spot where the door’s knob would be. I turned it and pulled, then walked toward the ghost of the staircase. “We have ten minutes to get upstairs, take care of the other Authority team if necessary, secure the execs, and get back down to the computer room.”

  I turned with a gulp and stared at Nathan, my heart hammering, but his attention was already on Nelson and Gabby.

  “Nelson, Gabby, what are you doing while Robin and her team are upstairs?”

  “The tech
team’s job is to hack holes in the system,” Gabby murmured. “We have from midnight until 12:20 to get it done. If any of Savannah’s team are indisposed for any reason, Nelson or I step in to take their place. In the meantime, we’re on call, ready to do anything they need.”

  “And I will be on the main computer, inserting bugs as quickly as I can, and waiting for the main hole to be built, while keeping in contact with the teams in the other holding centers,” Nathan said, his eyes on the rendering in front of us. “Kory, 12:10, where are you?”

  “Back in the computer room, guarding the doors,” Kory said without any hesitation. “Once we’re back there, our job is to make sure the techs can do their job without interruption.”

  “And at 12:20?” Nathan continued, asking no one in particular.

  “We’re on our way out of the building,” I answered. “We surround the execs, get back down the hall, pass through the foyer as if we’re supposed to be there, and exit the building. Get to the airship as quickly as possible. Secure the execs in their seats first, and then ourselves.”

  “And that will be that,” Nathan confirmed, clicking a button on the timer he was using. “Twenty minutes to work, and forty minutes in the building, max.” He paused and stared us all down, his eyes intense with focus. “Questions? Comments? Suggestions?”

  No one answered, and he stretched his shoulders a bit, as if he was trying to ease the tension.

  “Right,” he said a moment later. “Again.”

  After three hours of going through the plan until we knew our parts by rote and to the minute, we were allowed to leave for lunch. It was a sober, weary meal, each of us processing what we’d been told. An afternoon of physical training with Zion and Corona was going to be a welcome change.