Authors: Joseph Lallo
“
I’m telling you, there’s no one here! … I’m not an asshole, Don. If there was a painted up weirdo in this area, I THINK I’d see him. You sent us to the wrong area,” growled the leader of the group, “… I’m looking right at the wall. Quit jerking me around. I’m heading to the other side. Let’s go.”
The security guards hurried off, the voice in their earpiece screaming loud enough for Lex to hear him as they passed. When they were out of sight, he exhaled and started rummaging through one of his suit’s pouches. Finally he came up with... a finger. It was one of the fingers that Karter had blown off on the day Lex first met him, and was wired to a small control box with a handful of buttons on it and a screen. He tapped through the menu, seeing a sequence of names slide by that he didn’t recognize, finally digging up “Agent Fisk.” There actually hadn’t been enough of his fingers left to get a good print, but they’d managed to find his gun and lift a set off of that, which was subsequently fed to the programmable fingerprints. He swiped the finger across the reader. Instantly the green “access granted” light flicked on. He opened the door, slipped inside, and shut it behind him.
The door had led to a shaded area tucked into the corner of the courtyard that was crammed with as many media rigs as they could fit. Logos of various sites, channels, and stations were plastered across equipment from every price range. A handful of the people present snapped their heads in his direction when the door opened and shut, furrowing their brows in confusion. From their point of view, someone had certainly come through the door, but just as certainly there wasn’t anyone standing there. When they looked away, Lex’s heart started to beat again. Yes, this ulcer was coming along nicely.
He moved as close to the wall as possible, reasoning that elbowing through the crowd wasn’t going to get him any closer to the inside of the building anytime soon. Ma had actually managed to track down a building schematic, but said map neglected to take into account the triple capacity attendance of the speech, so he wouldn’t even bother looking it over until he was inside. He’d barely managed to squeeze three layers deep into the press of press when the door opened again and three of the security crew slipped inside. Their appearance motivated him to sacrifice a little bit of care for speed. He edged, pushed, slipped, and nudged his way through the crowd of microphones, cameras, monopods, tripods, and agitated news casters and crew. His attempts to keep his eye on the pursuing security agents led to him stumbling backward as often as frontward. People griped, complained, and snapped at him when he bumped them, turning to look past Lex to the next closest person to blame. When it became clear that the commotion he was causing was attracting their attention even without being able to see him, he tried to restore a level of care to his footsteps. Unfortunately, panic doesn’t get flipped off like a light switch, and it tends to keep its friend paranoia around for company. He turned around to see them, took a nervous step backward, and barely nudged yet another anchor.
“
Oh, I’m sorry,” said the young woman in reflexive politeness.
Lex froze at the sound of the voice. Those three words managed to force every ounce of fear, of duty, of THOUGHT from the would be infiltrator’s mind. He turned, eyes wide, and beheld a beautiful young newscaster. Carefully styled and highlighted auburn hair framed a face he would recognize anywhere. She’d brushed on makeup to hide her freckles, but even now she stared with striking blue eyes through a stylish pair of glasses, looking with disappointment at the obstructed view to the podium.
“
We aren’t going to see anything from here. I knew we should have gotten here earlier,” she fretted, “Can you get a shot at all, Ted?”
“
I doubt it. The transmission truck from NewsCom is blocking the way,” said a squat older man, strapped with cameras, lenses, microphones, and everything else necessary to do a news report from the field. That was the funny thing about optics. The digital sensors had gotten better and better, smaller and smaller, but it never changed the fact that a bigger lens made for a better picture, so the real pros were still working with hefty equipment, “I’ve got the directional, so we can get some decent audio.”
“
Well, there’s that. No offense, Ted, you do great work, but if we had brought one of those hovercam modules instead of you, we’d at least get an elevated shot.”
“
I’ve got a hovercam, but if we do that, this is going to be low res. You okay with that?”
As the two began to deliberate over how best to produce a report that probably would decide the direction of their careers for the decade to come, Lex just stared. Without his clumsy, desperate maneuvering though the press area, the security crew had lost track and moved on, but that was hardly his plan. Right now, staring was all he wanted to do. It wasn’t until a squeal of feedback and a nervous business underling’s voice announced that the speech would be starting in just a few minutes that Lex finally remembered he had a job to do. Quickly he realized that this impossible coincidence would eliminate one of the major question marks in the plan he and Ma had constructed. That is, if he could pull it off. It was an idiotic long shot, but at least that made it consistent with the rest of the plan. After shuffling against the wall, huddled between a stack of equipment cases and the support for a banner, and leaning against an intercom panel, he reached back and twisted the knob on his pack to zero.
“
Mitch,” he said quietly.
She glanced absentmindedly in is direction, “Mmm? I’m sorry, I’ll be with you in a minute, I’ve got to- … Trevor?”
She twisted her head, struggling to grapple with his unlikely presence. A sequence of emotions flickered across her features, starting with surprise, then moving swiftly to confusion. For an all too brief moment, a smile came to her face, but the memory of her last conversation with Lex wiped it away, replacing it with suspicion and anger.
“
What are you doing here? What is all of this?”
“
Shh. Quietly. I have to talk to you, and I don’t have much time.”
Michella stepped closer, blocking anyone else’s view of Lex’s hiding place.
“
What has been happening to you, Trevor? First the business with the mobster, then that fiasco Tessera? The Lon Djinn Jumper?”
“
I- You know that was me?”
“
I’d recognize that stupid run of yours and your silly haircut anywhere. How did you get here without me seeing you?”
“
You were distracted. What do you mean silly haircut? I haven’t gotten my hair cut in months.”
“
That’s what I mean. I don’t have time for his now, Trevor. You seem fine with ruining YOUR life, but I’ve got a career to think about.”
“
Michella, I-”
“
Do you have any idea how important it is that I make a good impression with this broadcast? This will be my first report that will part of the regional feeds.”
“
That’s great, but-”
“
It isn’t much to work with, and we’ve got a terrible spot, but once my face is out there I’ll have something to put in my portfolio, and I can-”
“
Listen!” Lex hissed, as loud as he dared.
Michella flinched back as though she’d been slapped, shock on her face. Outrage began to creep in around her expression. Lex quickly filled the silence before she had a chance to scream her disapproval.
“
I’m proud of you, I really am, and I’m sorry for everything that happened between us, but this isn’t about you and me right now, okay? I can’t go into the specifics, and you wouldn’t believe me if I did, but something very big and very bad is about to go down, and if I don’t stop it, then I’m never going to be able to live with myself, and other people aren’t going to be able to live, period. I can’t do it alone though, I need your help.”
“
You honestly think that I would risk helping you do anything after the things you’ve gotten yourself into in the past?”
Lex glanced nervously at a pair of guards who were working their way back toward him. Distantly he heard the one in charge tell his partner, who was having trouble with his communicator, to check in on intercom 100212. He turned. It was the one directly behind him.
“
Mitch, please. If you’ve ever trusted me before, trust me when I say this. In a few minutes, whether I succeed or fail, you are going to have the biggest story of the century fall into your lap. You just need to do what you do best. Keep your ears open, keep your eyes open. I’ll signal you, somehow. And if you never hear from me again, contact a planet called Big Sigma and talk to a person name Kart- ... A person named Ma. She’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“
Trev, you aren’t making any sense. How will I know the story when I see it?” she asked, concern fighting its way past her anger.
He glanced over her shoulder.
“
You’ll know,” he said, leaning forward and kissing her, “You look amazing, by the way.”
“
Trevor, you can’t just come here and say things like this-,” she began, turning to see what he’d been looking at.
He took the opportunity to switch the mental cloak on again.
“
We haven’t spoken since... Trevor?” she said when she turned back. She furrowed her brow and craned her neck, unconsciously trying to see around him in order to find out where he’d gone. He slipped away a moment before the security guard arrived.
“
Excuse me, Ma’am. I’m sorry, I need to use this intercom,” he said, “You haven’t seen anything unusual, have you? A man with face paint and a backpack?”
Michella looked around once more, failing to see her cloaked ex-boyfriend edging toward a door further along the wall.
“
No. No, nothing like that. Why, should I have?” she asked.
“
I doubt it. I think the guys in the surveillance room are running a drill. They’ve got us running all over looking for-”
“
Peterson. Don’t talk to the press,” his supervisor sternly instructed.
“
I need a decision on this, Miss Modane,” said her camera man.
Michella chewed her lip thoughtfully for a moment. She looked in a direction her mind vaguely indicated was a significant one, but saw nothing but an activated access panel near a security door.
“
Go with the low res hovercam on the podium, close as you can, but keep the full def cam ready to go on me. And keep your eyes open, Ted. I think I just got the scoop of a lifetime.”
Lex thumbed through a list of instructions that Karter and Ma had prepared for him, in the event he found an access panel. The Agent Fisk fingerprint should be enough to access his system account, with all of the associated privileges. That meant that he could deactivate any security that Fisk was in charge of. Based on his rank, that was probably everything. There were only two problems. One, he needed to enter every command correctly, or he would trip internal safeguards, and two, he had to be careful not to make too significant a security adjustment, or he would trip the same safeguards. If he had a low level computer background, this would be a breeze. As it was, the closest he came to system level computer experience was bringing up the cheat console in his favorite first person shooter.
Sweat was making his face paint run by the time he identified the OS and found the correct sequence of commands, keying them in one by one. Open security console, scan for authorization verification, select the systems he wanted to deactivate, send alert that the systems would be going down with administrator authorization, shut down, cross fingers. After a few moments he received a confirmation message. All scanners between this door and Fisk’s office should now be deactivated with reason code “prisoner escort,” and all doors between here and there should be fingerprint verification only. A warning scrolled up.
The following sensors cannot be deactivated, for safety reasons: Wireless spectrum activity detector.
That shouldn’t be a problem, he would just wait until he got back outside to use anything wireless. He logged out of the console, swiped the finger for the door, and slipped inside.
The door led to a narrow, bland corridor. All large corporate buildings had them. Little passageways, private elevators, and secret tunnels. Places for the janitors and caterers and other worker ants to do their jobs, out of the sight of clientele. Lex had become comfortable with places like these, since delivery boys were buzzed into the service doors when they arrived, and he was at least two different kinds of delivery boy. Little black blisters bulged from the ceiling every few feet, security cams. A conspicuous absence of blinking red lights proved that they were inactive. He walked nervously down the hall, glancing down at his downloaded schematic for directions along the way. It was quiet, the hall utterly empty except for the muffled clamor from outside the door. His footsteps echoed off of bare walls as he moved. Each wall was interspersed with metal doors with tiny windows made from the glass with a web of metal wire sandwiched inside, the kind you find in prisons and public schools. He made a handful of turns, finding himself in a labyrinth of identical halls. Without the schematic he would be hopelessly lost. Hell, he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t lost regardless.
Eventually he came to a worn blue line on the floor and a step-through, metal detector style doorway. A small placard explained in three languages that beyond this point full sensor sweeps were strictly enforced, ending with a list of prohibited items. The line was guarded by an alert security guard. She had a sidearm in a holster, and was clutching one of modern law enforcement’s proudest achievements, a stun rod.
Engineers had looked at the problem of crowd pacification. They knew that less-than-lethal methods were a must, but things like pepper spray had too high of a tendency to incapacitate the officer as well as the target. Stun guns had proven effective, but were slow to deploy and required training to use effectively. Batons were simple to use, but lacked stopping power unless used aggressively, at which point the line between “incapacitated” and “persistent vegetative state” was a bit too easy to cross. Thus, the stun rod was born. The differences between it and a cattle prod were mostly academic, but the thinking was, if it worked on livestock, it would work on protesters. Internal circuitry calibrated the shock force at the moment of impact, ensuring that regardless if it was a drug crazed biker or a cantankerous grandmother, the jolt delivered was just over the required amount to put them out of commission. That was the idea anyway. In practice it was more like just under the amount necessary to stop their heart, but the results were the same. Lex had once seen the business end of one back in college when he got a bit too rowdy in a bar. He was in no rush to repeat the experience.