“All right,” Kane summarized as I finished my breakfast. “We’ll have exactly two hours if all goes well. If anything goes wrong, we’ll signal an abort and regroup at base camp. Aydan will go in to view active sims and read documents only.” He gave me a severe look, and I nodded, suitably chastened.
Germain looked at his watch. “Time to go. Let’s do it.”
I balanced awkwardly inside the cardboard box as the van slowed and cornered. We stopped, and I heard the murmur of voices at the gatehouse. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief when forward motion resumed.
I hunkered down in my box while the van wound around several curves. Then movement halted and the engine stopped. I heard Germain get out of the driver’s seat. A few seconds later, the rear doors clicked open.
“All clear,” he muttered. I heard him pick up his toolbox, and then the back doors slammed. His cheery whistle receded from the van, and Kane and I uncurled from our boxes, stretching.
“Are you all right?” Kane inquired, indicating the box I’d just vacated.
I pushed the box aside. “Yeah, I’m fine. I knew I could get out of the box any time, so it didn’t bother me. If I’d been trapped in there, it would’ve been a whole different story.”
Kane eyed me dubiously in the dimness. “Are you sure about this?”
I lay down on the floor before I could change my mind. “Let’s just do it.”
He knelt at my feet and gently tied my ankles together. I breathed slowly and deeply, staying calm. I tensed when he took my hands in his, and he clasped them between his palms.
“Aydan, this is stupid,” he said softly. “You don’t have to do this. You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“Just do it,” I ground out.
He reluctantly reached for the tie. As it snugged around my wrists, I squeaked, “Stop!”
His knife was instantly in his hand, reaching to cut the tie, but I pulled my wrists away. “No, it’s okay.” I took a deep breath. “I can do this. Just… just… if you could reach into the front pocket of my waist pouch and give me my folding knife to hold. That would help.”
He unzipped the pocket and placed the sturdy knife in my hand. I clutched it like a lifeline and took another deep breath. “Okay, I’m going in.”
I concentrated and stepped into the white void of the network, where I swung my invisible arms wildly, trying to shake off the claustrophobia. After a few deep breaths, I calmed down enough to think rationally. I was safe. Kane would protect me. He would cut me loose at the first sign of trouble. And I had my knife. Just in case. I breathed some more before heading for the file repository.
I located and opened the file that had caught my attention the previous day. Sure enough, it contained a list of names and dollar amounts. Damn, I could use Hellhound’s photographic memory now. I tried to memorize the names, but they wouldn’t stay in my head.
I blew out an irritated breath. Then an idea struck me, and I read off the first few names, repeating them to myself while I closed the file and stepped carefully out the portal.
I tried to jerk my hands over my aching head, but they wouldn’t move. I hissed wordlessly through clenched teeth until the pain receded enough for me to open my eyes. Kane held my bound wrists as he stared down at me in concern.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Got some names for you. They won’t stay in my brain. Have to write them down.”
He quickly let go of my hands and extracted a notebook and pen from the clutter in the back of the van. “Shoot.”
I recited the names, and then ducked back into the network for the next batch.
I struggled against heavy weight. Pain drilled through my eye sockets while I fought to escape. Inarticulate cries strangled in my throat. When I finally pried my eyes open, Kane lay half on top of me, pinning my arms with his weight while he held my head in an iron grip, his hand pressed over my mouth.
I blinked painfully, and his grip loosened.
“Aydan, you have to stop now! You were trying to batter your brains out on the floor. And you’re getting louder every time.”
“Rella Industries,” I croaked. “Sumner, Brian; Telemetrix Solutions; Tatum, Gerald; Verge Systems; Wexner, Ralph; Williams, Alex.”
He scribbled down the names while I panted and tried not to whimper. I pawed at my head with my bound hands, trying to rub away the pain. Kane laid aside the notebook to lift my head and shoulders into his lap. His strong, warm hands firmly massaged my temples and the back of my head and neck. I couldn’t suppress a pathetic moan as my muscles relaxed.
“How much time have we got left?” I whispered.
He cradled my head in one large hand while he checked his watch. “An hour and a quarter.”
“Good. That was only the first file. I’ve got a long way to go.”
“Take a break,” he urged. “It’s getting worse every time you come out. Even with you tied up and me holding you down, you’re still shaking the whole van. And that’s just your normal exit. I don’t know what would happen if you actually got kicked out of the network.”
“It’s only bad because I’m going in and out so often. I hope I won’t have to come out so frequently once I get into the rest of the files,” I reassured him. “That list was just too good to pass up.”
“All right,” he agreed doubtfully. “But I’m going to shut this down if it gets any worse. You could be damaging your brain doing this, for all we know. And you’ll definitely damage your brain if you keep banging your head against the floor. Try to stop doing that.”
“Good advice,” I agreed wryly. “Thanks for that.”
He blew out a frustrated breath. “You know what I meant.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I’m going back in.”
I stepped into the void again. Back in the file repository, I discovered that the files tended to be grouped in clumps around specific dates. I skimmed through the most recent ones first. My excitement built as I read. Fuzzy Bunny ran a tight ship, indeed. And a well-documented one. I froze as an idea hit me.
Dropping the current records, I went back in time to the previous cluster of records, around March. My mouth fell open at the records of their secret tests of the brainwave-driven network. Coldness crawled down my backbone when I read the detailed information about me. Thank God, the file that contained my information still said ‘Deceased’.
I eyed the other clusters of files, dating back sporadically several years. My pulse raced. This was gold. My God, if Kane had this information…
A new thought struck me. Who else had this information? They had to be sharing files internally, if the Silverside operation was documented on these servers. Where else was it stored?
I hovered in the file repository while my brain grudgingly unearthed my outdated computer knowledge. Did they have backups? How were they synchronizing data?
Without conscious thought, I burrowed into the operating systems, watching services running and snooping on automated tasks. I caught my breath when I ran across the synchronization routine. It was scheduled to run every night at one A.M., but it could be manually activated as well.
I stretched my insubstantial body down the virtual data tunnels used by the sync routine. The data was being synchronized at six other sites. I snapped back into myself, trembling with excitement. At least six other servers. And I could get to them all.
Triumph filled me when I realized I could give Spider the IP addresses. His uber-geek skills would let him pinpoint the locations of the data centres. This could deal a deadly blow to Fuzzy Bunny.
I was about to step back out the portal and deliver the good news to Kane when a newly-created file caught my eye. It had appeared in the system within the last several minutes, and it was still being edited by the user.
I surveyed it cautiously. Maybe I could overcome the file locking and peek at a read-only copy. Ever so carefully, I opened the file.
Panic drove through me.
My heart tried to pound its way out of my chest as I dove back into the services and destroyed the synchronization routine. There was a chance nobody would notice until the next morning when they discovered that it hadn’t run. Unless they tried a manual sync…
Adrenaline burned my veins as I flew back to the sim rooms, hoping against desperate hope that I was wrong. My heart stopped when I peeked into an occupied room.
Somebody whimpered, “No, no, no,” as I jerked to a halt outside the portal to carefully step through.
It sounded a lot like me.