The second phase of our plan is going into effect today.
I pull on the overalls I’m borrowing from my brother-in-law since he’s the only person in the family who’s close to me in size. Also, his overalls are pretty realistically broken in. There’s paint on the knee, frayed cuffs, and a worn spot where he probably set his hip against an engine and burned the fabric. He’s a mechanic, not a plumber, but I doubt those pampered brats at Corvus know the difference. To them, all working-class dudes look alike, aren’t worth their attention, and are barely smarter than their office dogs.
But I know the working-class people I grew up with aren’t dumb—they’re just as smart as those coders at Corvus. It’s only luck, an accident of birth that put the Corvus guys where they are and kept the working-class guys where they are. It’s why I hate luck even though luck has gotten me where I am too.
Doc comes into my bedroom just as I’m zipping up the overalls. When she sees me, she does a double take, and then her expression falls.
“You… You…” It’s all she can get out as she gestures wildly at me.
“What?” I run my hands down the front of the overalls. “I swear they’re clean. They just don’t look it.”
She still gestures wordlessly at me.
I run my hand across my face to tug my beard. As my fingers find bare skin, I remember and curse under my breath.
“Is it the beard?” I ask. “Because it had to go if I was gonna be unrecognizable.”
While I didn’t cry while I was shaving it off, my throat did get kind of tight. And my eyes burned a bit. But I didn’t fucking cry.
“I’m sorry, it’s just so shocking.” She puts her fingers to her lower lip. “I’ve never seen any pictures of you without a beard.”
“Yeah, I’ve never not had it. As soon as I got facial hair, I grew one.” There are some pictures of me without a beard, but I hate it when people see those. Which Mark and Logan took advantage of when they sent some to be printed in Wired, the assholes. “It feels pretty weird to be without one, but you do what you have to do.”
Doc chews on her lower lip, her eyes pinched. “Well, it’ll grow back. Right?”
It should, but it’s going to be pretty goddamned itchy as I wait for it to grow out, and I hate the way I look without it. I’m not ashamed of my scars, but the one running along my jaw brings too many stares for my peace of mind. Everybody likes to ask about it too, but it’s a pretty boring story. I went head over heels in an ATV when I was eight and busted the underside of my jaw straight open. I had to have my jaw wired shut afterward. My parents have always hated talking about that, probably because I scared the shit out of them that day, so I try not to bring it up.
There’s a lot about my childhood that I try not to bring up.
Doc doesn’t ask about the scar, and I can’t tell if she’s staring at it or my general lack of beard. At least the scar will make me unrecognizable to everybody working at Corvus. A plumber with no beard and a massive scar—definitely not me. Their minds won’t be able make the leap.
Doc’s gaze runs from my head to my feet and then back up again. “You’re going in as maintenance man? It’s pretty fucking ballsy of you.”
I grin at her. “Ballsy is my middle name. I need to be able to actually get inside the building, and this was the only way I could think to do it.” I had to practically be invisible, and who’s more invisible than the maintenance staff?
Her face screws up in a frown. “The disguise is good, but do you really think they’re going to let you just waltz up and touch a machine? They wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom by myself.”
“But they thought you had enough knowledge to be dangerous. They won’t think that about me. Nobody’s going to stay to watch me root around in the plumbing system for hours on end.”
“You should’ve been a psychologist,” she says. “Or a sociologist or whoever studies stuff like that.”
“The social engineering part has always been the most important part of a hack. And I’ve got a few other tricks to get inside.”
The gleam in her eyes is admiring. “I bet you do.” Her mouth turns down. “Well, good luck.”
I pull her in for a kiss. It’s different, kissing her without a beard. I can get closer, more intimate, skin touching skin. Maybe I shouldn’t regrow it.
When I release her, Doc does her sigh. “Man, I already miss your beard.”
“I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t worry about me.”
She rolls her eyes. “You can’t tell me what to do. You should go. The sooner you leave, the sooner you can come back.”
I kiss her one last time. “For luck.” And then I force myself to walk out.
I’ve borrowed a van from the maintenance company, and I take that now to Corvus. I make myself calm, easy—this is just another job, one more toilet to fix in a long line of them. I don’t even know what this company does. Something with computers? Whatever.
It must have worked, because security waves me right through without a pat down, without going through my toolbox, although they do give me a visitor pass. Very, very sloppy. They’ve gotten complacent here.
Once I’m inside, I try not to laugh. The last time I was here, I didn’t quite take in the ridiculous, cosmetic security theater. All of it is just so over the top: the unlabeled doors, the lack of doorknobs, the security guards’ show out front. Most of this to impress upon people this place is really impenetrable rather than making it so.
Another security guy meets me inside. “It’s this way.” He starts walking.
He simply assumed I was here to fix the bathroom. Again, this is sloppy. I should have credentials, a background check, my stuff searched, at the minimum. All this is working in my favor, but I still can’t help but be irritated by it.
We come to another unmarked door. This one at least has a doorknob. “Here it is.” The security guy holds open the door but doesn’t walk inside. “The thing just started flooding yesterday and wouldn’t stop. I think there’s something in the pipe.”
Yep, there certainly is. I nod my thanks. “I’ll take a look, get this thing fixed right up.”
And just as I expected, the security guard takes off.
I smile to myself as I get to work. He was clearly uncomfortable about going into a women’s bathroom. That’s the thing about human beings, a lot of times they can’t get over their own taboos in order to do what they know is necessary. He knows he should keep an eye on me, should never let me be alone in this place, but he also really, really doesn’t want to be in the women’s bathroom even if it’s empty. It’s just a bridge too far, so he has to commit the cardinal sin of leaving me alone.
Not that I’m complaining.
I wait until I hear his footsteps die away, then I wait five minutes more. The entire time there’s no other sounds in the hall. It’s almost as if this place is empty.
But I know it’s not. Thanks to the map Grace drew for me, I know exactly where I need to go. She didn’t know much about the specifics of the Oracular division, but she did know where it was. That’s really all I need. I can take care of the rest on my own.
I tuck my visitor pass behind the broken toilet. Slowly, quietly, I open the bathroom door. There’s nobody in the hallway. I step out, grabbing my toolbox as I do. If they’d bothered to search it, they might have found the false bottom where I keep all the electronics. They think this business of not putting handles on the doors is going to keep somebody out, but I know better.
I make my way down the hall, not going too slow, not going too fast, like I know exactly where I’m going. Like I definitely belong in the more secure areas.
I count down the number of doors in the hall—one, two, three, four, five. I come to an intersection and turn left. I start counting doors again. This time I stop at the third door. It’s one of the handleless ones, completely ordinary.
But this is the way into the secure areas of Corvus.
I open the toolbox, get into the false bottom, and pull out my scrambler. It’s no bigger than a cell phone, and it knows the exact frequency to tell this door to open up and let me in. Doorknobs or not, they’re not keeping me out.
The scrambler whirrs and clicks, which is totally unnecessary, but I like having the illusion of sound to tell me something’s happening. One of the perks of designing the device yourself is that you can make it answer to whatever quirks you might have. And I like noises and flashing lights.
The door snicks open in under five seconds.
Bingo.
The door opens into another hallway, this one just as featureless as the last.
I start counting doors again—one, two, three, four, five, six—then open another door with my scrambler. After doing that a couple of times, I start to feel like a rat in a maze, which is probably the whole intention. Not only would it keep intruders out, but it also makes the employees feel nice and despairing. Abandon all hope; there’s no way out of here. Real fucking cheery.
After six minutes in the maze, I start to see some signs of life. Behind one door I can hear a faint humming, like an air conditioner going. It’s probably the climate-control system. If their server farms are as big as Grace described, it has to take a lot of effort to keep those machines cool.
I count more doors, go down more halls until I finally arrive at the place I need to be. I haven’t met another living soul, which I’m grateful for but I’m also oddly freaked out by. There should be some people here. It can’t just be machines, featureless doors, and security guards.
When I get to the door I want, it takes the scrambler a really long time to open it. Several minutes, in fact. Security on this room is a lot tighter than anywhere else—which means I’ve found exactly what I’m looking for. I keep one eye out as the scrambler does its work, looking up and down the hallway. Nothing and nobody appears. I might be the last man on earth, considering how empty this place is.
When the door finally swings open, I do a silent fist pump. This is turning out to be way easier than I thought, so easy that I’m contemptuous of Fuchs. He’s one of the most paranoid guys in the business, and this is how he handles his security? It’s just way too easy.
The door opens into a massive server farm, which is exactly what I was expecting. There’re a couple of terminals at desks, but mostly the room is empty. Somebody should be down here keeping an eye on things, but fortunately nobody wants to work in the server farm. It’s too cold and lonely and mind-numbing, which works out perfectly for me.
I sit down at one of the terminals and fire up the machine. With a few keystrokes, I’m inside. Whoever had this open last made sure to log out, but they left a bunch of windows open that they shouldn’t have. People get lazy, click on links they shouldn’t, use passwords that are easily remembered. And that’s how people like me slip inside. Being a great hacker isn’t always about knowing the most about code. It’s also just waiting for that one moment when people slip up and let you waltz right in.
I start searching for anything labeled Oracular. Soon enough I’ve got a huge list of files to copy. So I unzip the fly of my overalls and pull out my dick.
If anyone finds me like this, it’s going to be real fucking awkward to explain, even beyond my being where I shouldn’t be. But I knew I could be searched at the door, and I knew I had to get a USB drive in somehow, so I taped it to the underside of my dick. If there’s one guarantee in this world, it’s that most people will never touch a stranger’s junk even if it’s part of their job description. Just like with the bathroom, I took full advantage of squeamishness to get ahead.
As I pull the tape off, I bite back a yelp. Goddamn, but that hurts. And I have to tape it back into place once I’m done. And then pull it off again. I close my eyes and try not to think about it. I take a deep breath and pull off the last bit of tape.
My eyes snap open and my mouth releases a silent scream.
The things I do to get this stuff. I take the tape off the USB drive and try not to think about how much of my skin is stuck to it. Before I can put the key in and start copying, I need to disable the copy prevention system—I’m sure they’ve got one on here to prevent someone from doing exactly what I’m about to.
Once that’s done, I pop the key into the back of the tower and start the copying process. The little pop-up window tells me the download will take five minutes. I start to pace, silently demanding the download rate to hurry up, hurry up, hurry the fuck up.
This is the worst part of the entire thing. Even though I’m not any more exposed than I was before, sneaking through the hallways, I feel like a sitting duck.
If anyone’s monitoring this machine, they’ll see I’m downloading from it. And then they’ll come down to see what’s going on or worse, kill the download remotely, and I’m fucked.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. There’s a noise from the hallway, a whisper of something, and I resist the urge to smack the tower. Whacking a machine might feel good, but it never fixed anything. And maybe I’m hearing things at this point. Christ, I felt less exposed with my dick out earlier.
Finally, finally, the download hits the magic number—one hundred percent!—and finishes. I grab the stick out of the back—thank God for PCs, there’s no fucking around with unmounting a USB like on a Mac—and then I tape the key back to the underside of my dick. I tuck everything away, zip up, and head for the exit.
My heart’s going a mile a minute as I retrace my steps through the maze. I focus on my breathing, making sure my thoughts stay straight. I might have gotten the information I needed, but if I get lost here, I’m still fucked. To keep myself from flipping out, I imagine what Doc will say when I show her the USB drive. And what we’ll find once we start digging into the data I’ve grabbed. God, I’ve waited so long to break into Corvus—this is going to be better than any Christmas I’ve ever had.
I finally make it back into the main hallway just as sweat starts to trickle down my back. At least I have an excuse to be sweaty—plumbing is hard work. It’s only going to help with my disguise.
I aim toward the women’s bathroom, triumph sizzling through my veins. I’ve almost done it. I’m almost home free.
And then Minerva Dyne appears around the corner.
Oh fuck. Of all the fucking people to see me…
She stops dead when she sees me, suspicion crinkling her features. “Who are you?”
My heart is hammering in my ears. I point to the name stitched on my overalls, trying to look dumb. “Tom. I’m the plumber.”
“Shouldn’t you be in the bathroom then?” Her gaze is too tight on me, and it’s making my skin crawl. She doesn’t recognize me—she’d scream bloody murder if she did—but she clearly knows something is up. “And why aren’t you wearing your visitor pass?”
“I left it in the bathroom with my tools. Stuff like that tends to fall into places it shouldn’t.”
Her mouth flattens. “You have to wear it all the time. I don’t care if it gets in the way. And why aren’t you in the bathroom?”
“I had to take a piss,” I say, enjoying the distaste that flashes across her face.
I’m being deliberately crude, the better to distract her from her suspicions. She’d expect a plumber to be this shitty.
“I see.” She makes the s sharp with disbelief. “I’ll walk you back.”
She marches me to the women’s bathroom, but she doesn’t come inside. Again, there’s that natural taboo. It’s her bathroom, she has every right to be there, but I’ve invaded it. It’s not safe for her anymore, so she’s not coming inside.
Once she shuts the door behind her, I start banging on the pipes and do some plunging of the toilet. I’m not really doing anything useful, but I wanted her to think I am. If she’s not waiting behind that door, listening to me, I’ll eat that USB drive.
After about twenty minutes of that—I hope she enjoyed the show—I dump a packet of powder down the toilet, then flush. This is the antidote to what Doc had put in before and will completely dissolve what’s in there. It’ll be like the toilet was never broken.
I flush a couple more times just for effect and do one last check that I haven’t permanently fucked up the toilet. Everything looks nice and swirly. So I gather up my things and saunter back outside.
Minerva’s out there waiting for me, just as I expected.
“Who are you with again?”
I hold up my ID tag. “Advanced Building Maintenance. I’ve been here before fixing stuff. You don’t remember me?”
She raises one thinly plucked eyebrow. “No,” she says shortly, “I don’t.”
“Well, I’m all finished in there. It’s good as new if you want to give it a try.”
“No, thank you,” she says coolly. “I’ll show you to the front.”
She walks me all the way to the security desk. They snatch guilty looks at her as they pat me down like they should have done at the very beginning. They also go through my toolbox but never find the false bottom. And of course they never get near my crotch.
“He’s clean,” the main security dude says.
“Hmm.” Minerva crosses her arms. “If you say so.”
I flash her a blank smile, then head for the door. She follows.
Shit. I’ve got to turn up the charm here to get her off my back.
“Hey,” I say, casual as anything, “do you want to get drinks sometime? Maybe dinner? I can give you my number.”
She’s appalled at the very suggestion. “No, I’m making sure you know your way out.”
“Really? I thought maybe you wanted to ask me out since you’re following me.”
She stops dead and cocks her head. She looks like a snake sighting a mouse moving through the grass. I don’t know what I’ve done to give myself away, but she’s on to me. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Tom O’Grady.” Ordinary plumber-type name.
“Right. And you said you’ve been here before?”
“Yep. Another toilet to fix, only it was a different one.”
If she checks that story, she’ll see that it’s true. I made sure to pull up the records of the maintenance company’s visits to this building so I would have a plausible cover story if I needed to lie my way out.
“I remember that,” she says, “but I don’t remember you.”
“Do you usually remember the guy who fixes your toilet? Or empties your trash? Or waxes the floors?”
She flushes with embarrassment, which I wasn’t expecting. She always struck me as a snob through and through.
“I’m sorry to have kept you,” she says stiffly. “Have a nice day.”
I let myself whistle as I walk out to my van. After all, it’s what a plumber would do.