Page 45 of Coldwire
Or someone who can only work in the real, like those in the national data center, toiling away at the servers.
“Air quality isn’t too bad today.”
“Winds must be blowing pollution north,” Miz replies dully. She tugs the curtain, like she’s trying to smooth out the creases and tatters. “It’ll be worse in Threto. The mountains lock the smoke in the basin.”
As the day starts growing brighter, that’s when the activity increases downcountry, too. Tents on the streets rustle. Squatters who were taking refuge in abandoned buildings exit before they’re caught by patrol officers.
“Threto,” I say, “is also notoriously gridlocked by Medaluo’s government surveillance.” And consequently, impossible to enter or exit unnoticed because of its position in that mountain basin.
Miz shrugs. “We’ll be fine. We’ll hack through it.”
To get into Threto, they’re going to need to do more than scramble the cameras. It’s not Upsie, the city where foreigners are expected. In Threto,they’ll need the cameras to think we have existing identities registered in the city, or else the police drones will be after us in a split second.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask suddenly.
“Sorry?”
I tap a knuckle to the glass. “This. Terrorizing Atahua. Adventuring through Medaluo with—and forgive me for assuming here—an end goal of terrorizing Atahua some more.”
“Why areyoudoing what you do?” she returns. “Loyal to NileCorp without any reason.”
“The reason is survival under capitalism,” I say. “Back to you.”
Miz huffs, shoving her hands into her pockets. It pulls the loose material of her dark green trousers. Something tickles the back of my brain. It’s the same itch as smelling a perfume that I haven’t used in years. The déjà vu of visiting a site I’ve seen in my dreams. For ten weeks, I was in virtual Medaluo performing a mission I can’t remember. Any plan I come up with here to get into Kunlunmusttake some inspiration from what I decided to do last time. I am still the same person. I wouldn’t think differently just because I don’t have the memory.
“Have we met already?” I ask before Miz can speak again.
She rears back. “We—” Her jaw makes a sound when she takes a moment, amending her answer. “No. Of course not.”
A quick knock on our door interrupts my retort, which is for the best because I was going to accuse Miz of lying. Nik marches in. He looks like he hasn’t slept either, still in the same black shirt, a clump of his curly hair flat at the side. The glasses don’t hide his dark circles.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Not really,” I reply.
Blare comes in next, chomping on a persimmon. They look bright and rested. They’ve also hung two bags off each shoulder, which doesn’t seem sustainable. “Are we going?”
“Let’s walk through the agenda first.”
Nik takes out his handheld, pointing it at the wall. He slides his finger across the surface, and a beam of light shoots from the top of the device, projecting its screen onto the white wall, the right edge slightly cut off by the television. He frowns. Pinches the screen on the handheld, and the projected light shrinks by a few inches too, fitting neatly on the wall without being cut off.
“Our target location is the Upper Sea National Data Center, which holds a file that comprises one-third of a program we’re after,” he begins without fanfare. The blueprint appears on the wall. “There’s a main front entrance and a side door used for mail collection. Upsie’s data center sits east of the city in an industrial area. Security will be alerted to any lurkers. We need to use the main entrance with legitimate credentials if we want to avoid notice.”
He swipes his finger, changing the projection.
“Here are the eighteen employees working at the data center today. I’m welcoming thoughts on whether there’s anyone in particular we should be targeting.”
I read through the brief profiles displayed on the wall. Miz must have written this up, or at the very least sorted the information she found to put this together. Name, age, position, title.
“I still don’t think it matters,” Miz says. “Whoever we can clone from the parking lot.”
“There’s the matter of the human fail-safe,” Nik supplies. It sounds like a reminder, like they’ve discussed this before and hit a wall then, too. “Any secure facility is going to put an additional barrier in front of someone simply bum-rushing an employee for a badge. In this case, it’s the person running the reception desk.”
“Unfortunate,” Miz mutters.
Nik ignores her. “We need to think about which credentials make the best case so that the receptionist doesn’t ring an alarm.”
Blare bites down noisily on the persimmon. I’ve narrowed my eyes, and Nik must take that for some sort of response.
