Page 61 of Coldwire
dazzling_star:this is kinda confusing bc it says i’m talking to nik and nik2 so i have to assume nik2 is Miss Earpiece Stealer
me:Yeah
me:Please stand by for when I need you
dazzling_star:
dazzling_star:funny how you need me despite your insistence on me staying in the car
me:Yes, and now you’re able to hack remotely so if anything that proves my point
me:Checkmate
I start searching. Maneuvering through large blocks of stored information isn’t feasible by any means, but without engineer credentials, I’m only browsing the file names across the boxes anyway. It’s a fail-safe on the data center’s part. Credentials that get us into the room won’t get us into the servers. Credentials that get us into the servers often don’t scan into the room, because those employees are probably working from upcountry.
me:Okay, do you see my view?
dazzling_star:yup i’m looking. what are you after?
me:I’ve pulled up a box with hundreds of pages of survey data. Can you see if anything in here mentions Kunlun? I bet there’s an ad company out there that makes a note of Kunlun’s citizens.
dazzling_star:okie dokie
dazzling_star:give me like ten minutes
me:Only ten minutes?
dazzling_star:you wouldn’t believe the amount of back doors on the dark web
dazzling_star:(kid-safe dark web)
I huff. Still, Blare goes idle immediately to work, so I can’t complain while I’m making use of their labor.
The problem with getting into Kunlun—the reason it is so impossible to hack—is that pesky second password. The system is already checking for citizenship, so only avatars with the designation can enter the space at all without setting off a dozen alarms. But even if someone were to steal a citizen’s credentials, preparing to hack into the space wearing that citizen’s avatar, that second password is going to halt them in their tracks. When entry to Kunlun is so exclusive, people don’t tend to write their passwords down. It’s nearly impossible to find any floating around the dark web.
I push away from the screen for a moment, rolling my neck and hearing it crack on both sides. At the end of the server, Nik hasn’t moved at all from his initial stance, his feet braced and his posture hunched over his device.
My plan to get into Kunlun involves a bit more abstraction. There’s one place in the entire world that won’t require a second password into Kunlun: Offron’s data center. The engineers need to be able to go up and perform maintenance, but an engineer living in Offron is unlikely to be able to afford Kunlun citizenship, so their activity will be carefully logged and recorded if they have a back door open like that. Kunlun’s security will review every instance of people without citizenship coming in even through that back door to ensure safeguarding.
So we can’t just use the back door haphazardly. We’ll get kicked out in seconds with our own credentials. But wecanuse that door as Kunlun citizens.
I’ll need a few candidates first.
The chat window lights up again.
dazzling_star:i have two PDFs. they both look like Kunlun citizen lists. does this work?
dazzling_star:[Sent two attachments.]
I open the files, browsing through the lists. They’re spreadsheets pulled from some city registry that takes note of energy usage by Upsie downcountry residents who spend monthlong stints in Kunlun. This is great. Plenty to work from. I’m just about to tell Blare that they did a great job when new messages come in.
dazzling_star:it’s still encrypted dude. you might have located it with your bff trail but we need to isolate it among everything else on the server
dazzling_star:oops wrong person
me:???
Nik’s sudden slap against the server echoes through the room. My gaze whips over, then narrows. Blare must have resent their message to the correct recipient. Nik is muttering something to himself, clearly flustered.
