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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; two, he had to be careful not to make too significant a security adjustment, or he would trip the same safeguards. If he had even 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 glass, with a web of metal wire sandwiched inside, the kind found in prisons and public schools. He made a handful of turns, finding himself in a labyrinth of identical halls. Without the schematic, he would have been 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-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 that 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.
When the young lady on duty failed to notice him just as all of the others had, he slipped through the detector . . . and promptly heard a terrifying sound. The display screen beside the detector blipped and explained that a wireless signature had been detected. He dug frantically through his equipment, ensuring his slidepad was powered off and that he hadn’t mistakenly brought anything else with a transmitter, but still the warning flashed and a countdown to a “general alert” had begun. The guard took notice, and sighed in irritation before checking her own slidepad and radio, only to find that they too were deactivated. She began to look around curiously, tapping the screen. There were seventeen seconds left. Slowly she raised her stun rod and clicked it on.
Lex patted every pocket, feeling for anything he might have overlooked, but it wasn’t until his hand brushed the antenna of the backpack that he realized the truth. The mental cloak! Karter had said something about it transmitting on . . . psychic wavelengths or some such. It must be visible to the detector. He sprinted deeper into the complex, turned a corner and, with a handful of seconds left, desperately clicked it off. He held perfectly still, eyes shut and teeth clinched. Enough time had passed with no alarm. It had worked. A shaky sigh of relief escaped his lips and he moved carefully onward. The cameras were all off. He just had to avoid being seen the old-fashioned way, that was all. A quick dig through one of his multitude of pockets unearthed a thin balaclava, the good old-fashioned ski mask, staple of infiltrators and bank robbers everywhere. Ma had insisted that the face paint was all that was needed to disguise him, and that a full face mask could draw more attention, but Lex was occasionally a sucker for a cliché.
Behind him, the guard looked at the screen, now reading an all-clear message. She’d been told there had been an incident in orbit. After that, there had been a report of an intruder in the courtyard that no one had been able to spot. Then there was the unannounced admin override of the security in this very hallway, yet no admins had come through yet. Now this sensor malfunction. It all seemed a bit much for a series of coincidences. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what it could mean--but she didn’t have to figure it out. That was above her pay grade. All she had to do was call it in. She pressed a button on the hardwired intercom.
“Dispatch? Do me a favor and shoot a message up to level 2. We might have a situation . . .”