WHEN I WOKE up, there was a persistent vibration in my jaw, and I realized I had passed out on my phone after dropping it on the break room floor. There was a pool of blood beneath me, and I realized I may need to see a doctor at some point soon, otherwise I was going to expire sooner than that week-old milk in the fridge.
And I had barely gotten my money’s worth out of that Keurig machine.
My feet found an unsteady footing, then I shuffled over to the sink and changed the napkins out for some fresh ones. I made the dressing a lot tighter this time, then reset the sling. I grabbed my phone and answered it.
“Jesus, Virtue, it’s been almost five minutes!”
“Had to take a leak. I’m good now.”
“Just try not to get any more killed.”
“I’ll try, but I have to call you back. This is where it’s going to get rough.”
“Just be careful.”
“I will. Thanks.”
I pocketed the phone and shook my head to clear it. Every thing hurt like hell. My knees, my gut, my head, especially my arm. And it was my sketching arm, too. And I had about a half dozen floors to climb.
I headed to the stairwell and started up. Every floor was agony. I’d always heard that using the stairs was a healthy option, but I bet falling from a ceiling and getting shot negates many of those health benefits. By the time I’d reached the twelfth floor, I looked at the plastic sign by the door, and confirmed it was Anderson Textbooks. Apparently, this building had an extra floor I didn’t know about. Or care about … until tonight.
The stairwell door on the thirteenth floor didn’t have a keycard scanner, but luckily, Leblanc and his team had blown the door open. I peered past the door to see a blank, white hallway with only one elevator door, and only one additional door leading out of the hallway, at the end, on the right. The rest of the hallway was bare, except for two interesting details.
First of all, it was loud. Really loud. Jet on the runway loud. There must have been hundreds of server fans blaring out from somewhere nearby.
Secondly, opposite the elevator door, on the wall, was a round sticker with an “X” on it. There was some smudging around the sticker, but otherwise, the walls were gleaming white.
I knew what this was. It was a hidden security floor. The “X” was a keycard scanner, hidden underneath the drywall. The door itself was a heavy security door, which would open automatically if the scanner registered the proper card. I guess they couldn’t get a copy of the proper card, since this was the door they’d been cutting through.
So, what does one keep on a hidden floor, behind a hidden scanner and a blast door? Good question.
The answer was simple … to me at least. Let me explain. As an unofficial, part-time sysadmin at Taiji Satcom, I was tasked with moving servers into and out of a server farm in Toronto. It was a high-security building that had a similar layout—right down to the hidden sensor on the wall. The one I worked at also had a special freight elevator, fingerprint readers, and one of those man-trap revolving doors. A pretty secure setup, indeed.
Here was sort of half that level of security, but with the added benefit of obfuscation—no one knew this floor existed, and no one had access to it. Well, someone had access to it, but the bigger question was: access to what, exactly?
The oppressive heat and noise that was pouring through the open doorway was evidence of the what. The who and why was still to be determined.
I moved past the blast door. It hung open, still on its hinges, but the lock had been cut with the oxy-acetylene torch. The torch was discarded on the floor. Holding the door open was a thick wooden wedge. It looked battered and used, but still strong enough to hold the heavy door open.
Beyond the blast door was a very serious server farm. It ran the full length and width of the floor, and I counted maybe well over a hundred full-height server cabinets. I peered into one and noticed that instead of the typical 1U or 2U rack mount servers, there were shelves—four per cabinet. On each shelf were two tower units, minus the cases. They were giving off a ton of heat. That explained why it was so hot in the building. You’d think they would have invested a little more for A/C, given this setup. Unless, of course, this was an off-the-books server farm. Which it most definitely was.
I pulled out one shelf as far as I could, given the cabling, and looked at the guts of the unit. Standard gaming rigs. Nothing special, but also nothing you’d stock a server room with, unless … And the thing that caught my eye was the add-on PCI cards. Dual video graphics cards with large heatsink fans. Definitely state-of-the-art gaming machines.
Another sound interrupted my investigation, louder than the servers. Some machine was starting up—something behind me, near the door. It was an office printer. Looked like a couple of sheets were being printed. Behind the printer were four large tanks of compressed gas. I examined them a little closer. They were HFC fire suppression tanks. HFCs were used after Halon 1301 was phased out. These halocarbon agents were safer for the ozone layer, and, like Halon, suppressed fire by displacing oxygen from the room.
And I had an idea. But I’d need to make a few calculations.