Page 59 of V-Day
A shimmering, shaking fence would tip off someone for sure.
Only, if she slowed down, she might run out of time and the cameras would see her.
She didn’t know where the inspiration came from. It was a barely seen visual in her head, then she knew what to do.
Four meters out from the fence and the innocent shopping bag which was about to save her life, Chloe flipped herself sideways, pushed her feet out ahead of her and slid into the home plate. Her runners thumped up against the mounds of weeds growing about the base of the fence. The bag flapped in front of her, obscuring her view of the base.
She waited, lying in a curled-up fetal position behind the bag, listening, her heart hammering and her lungs bellowing.
Nothing.
A cricket whizzed by.
Chloe hauled herself up into a cross-legged sitting position, her back to the bag. She hunched over and peeled off her backpack. Her hands were shaking. It took two tries to unzip the pack and pull out her laptop. She dropped the pack on the ground and rested the laptop on it. The dongle Cristián had given her was one of Pia’s inventions. It slid into the USB port without issue and lit up at the end, a reassuring green color.
Chloe narrowed her focus down to the steps needed now. She searched for the network. Admiration touched her. Damn, Pia was good. The dongle was picking up over thirty networks, most with five bars.
Chloe found the right one and hacked in. This was easy stuff she could do with her eyes closed. The Insurrectos had minimal security measures and a dozen back doors some enterprising hacker had built for himself, which made the job even easier. Chloe unlocked one of the back doors and stepped inside.
The security AI was smart about images it saw in the camera and completely stupid about anyone talking to it inside the network. It rolled over obediently and showed its belly.
Chloe electronically scratched and tickled it, while she grabbed thirty seconds of feed and rolled them into a loop and set the loop spinning.
Then she watched the security feed for a full circuit.
Nothing.
Keeping the network open, she tabbed over to another screen, remotely connected to her phone and sent a text to Cristián.
ALL CLEAR.
It wasn’t exactly all clear. They couldn’t just lurch out of the trees and amble to where she hid, because someone in the control tower may notice them lingering at the fence. Only Cristián, who must paint the washroom electronically, and Parris, who would pass the coordinates to the drone, would come down to where Chloe was hunched. The others would cover them. They would dodge from bush to stump to tall grass patch and watch the tower as they came.
Chloe watched them break from the trees. They looked as small as the shopping bag behind her had looked from up there.
She wiped her forehead. She was sweating, now the sprint was over and her heart was back to normal.
It took the pair of them seven minutes to reach her position. Parris dropped to her knees in front of Chloe, swinging a small pack around her shoulders and onto her knees, moving quickly.
Cristián grabbed Chloe’s face and kissed her, hard and fast, then took the giant ice-cream cone device Parris handed him. He lifted it. “Can I use your shoulder?” he asked Chloe.
She nodded. He rested his forearm on it, bending to sight along his arm. The ice-cream cone was clear plastic with wire veins threaded through it in squares. In the center was a long stem. The active end of the laser, Chloe presumed. Cristián pointed it at the base, lifting himself above the bag just enough to see.
Parris was hammering on her keyboard, typing in commands and hitting the enter key in quick succession. She looked up at Cristián and nodded.
Cristián’s eyes narrowed as he concentrated. His face was inches from hers. She suspected he’d forgotten she was there.
Then his eyes refocused. For a second, their gazes met.
His mouth quirked up in a smile.
Chloe caught her breath.
His focus pulled away, over her shoulder. She held still.
“There!” he said, his voice harsh and low.
“Got it,” Parris said. She hit the enter key with a decisive snap of her finger then slapped the laptop shut and shoved it back in the pack. She took the laser painter from Cristián and jammed it in on top. “In five minutes, this open area will be swarming with pissed Insurrectos. Run like hell, people!”
