Slapdash Neural Wiring | The Murderbot Diaries | SecUnit Nine #2 [✓]

3. I decide not to set everything on fire

I studied the door. Its locking mechanism was a lot more sophisticated than I'd expected. It felt like looking at a wall and wondering how to get past. My specialty had been non-destructive entry methods, but I could already tell that my lock picks were incompatible with the door. There was a manual release but it would look suspicious if Anghen the temporary maintenance technician hit the manual release for a secured area. Hacking the door would take a long time, since it wasn't on the surface-level SecSystem that I was used to. It was buried in a mess of secondary systems that didn't talk to HubSystem. Employees with security clearance could enter by swiping little physical cards then inputting a four-digit numerical sequence.

Code Breaker would make short work of the numerical sequence, but the physical key would be harder to fake.

I studied the electronics. I leaned over to obscure the camera's view of what I was doing. I jammed Code Breaker in the swipe and cycled through the override codes that I had from GiDeon. None of them worked. Shit, someone had actually updated the codes.

I couldn't leave Code Breaker behind to guess override codes. There were three reasons I bothered to think of: 1. Someone would notice. It was a physical device. 2. It was evidence. 3. Code Breaker was for brute force and known-word attacks, which would be ineffective against randomly generated codes.

~~~

[Footnote 4: Code Breaker was not intended for guessing passphrases. I'd discovered the functionality through experience. Incredibly, it was designed as a jamming device. More on that later. (Very later, like Footnote 10 in Chapter 10.) (Yeah, there's a lot of these.)

So Code Breaker could be left in my palm, where it interfaced with my brain, but it also could be removed and left behind so that I could do things. (Although if I left it behind for too long it would self-destruct.) (Just assume any tech I stole from GiDeon had a built-in self-destruct function. Even I had one.)

/End of Footnote 4.]

~~~

It was annoying that a Deontologic ComfortUnit was being stored in an extra secure area without any surveillance cameras in transit when I didn't even get that kind of treatment.

Huh, the fact that it was a ComfortUnit and the fact that there were no surveillance cameras gave me pause. I hoped it wasn't doing its job. Either there weren't any cameras, or I didn't have access. I don't know. I'm not a spy.

Options:

Try to open the door immediately. Find Cyan. But maybe it's working right now and you're bothering it.

Let the humans open the door on arrival. Find Cyan. But maybe it will be disassembled and you'll be too late and get disassembled too and you'll have to kill a bunch of humans. Not necessarily in that order.

I drew up a probability chart.

Option 2 required more human interaction and had more points of failure.

If I opened the door myself, I would be able to gather more information. I'd have more time to think of a smart way to get off the cargo ship.

I needed a current employee's key to get in. I could wait. Or I could just ask.

I watched myself through the cameras. With the blue coveralls, I looked like a typical contracted worker. My pocket litter was unconvincing, as I had none of the tools of the maintenance trade, and all tools of a thief, but I wore my bag underneath the coveralls so it looked like I had a fat little belly. When I wore my clothing in ways that were so unlike myself, I almost felt like a person.

We were still at the port. Maybe I could go back to Plan A-0. It was simple. Open a portal, get Cyan (wherever it was), open a portal, get out. When I took out the portal device again, though, my organic skin prickled.

I had to hurry. Cyan had undergone a forced shutdown and I wasn't sure how long it would be salvageable.

When ComfortUnits outlived their usefulness, their memories would be erased and they would be harvested for parts.

Our next stop was Tar-Brea Depot, where the company did that kind of thing.

My intuition told me that breaking the door, portal or otherwise, was a bad idea. I had no idea why.

I was wearing the right clothing.

There was no one around.

I tapped the bot pilot, which responded with an all-clear.

There was negative air pressure in the room where Cy was stored but my risk assessment module indicated it was safe to use the portal device.

Cy was so close. Yet every part of my body screamed that it was a terrible idea to open a portal. Maybe because a false wormhole alarm could be perceived as a nuisance, a second alarm might be grounds for investigation. I didn't have the codes to squash the alarm, not in any kind of timely manner. Maybe I was afraid of causing an explosion—oh, yeah, it was definitely explosions. I was blind to the layout in Cy's secured area. If I opened a portal in the wrong place, things could explode, liquids could spill everywhere, and I might kill Cyan/myself/everyone.

I followed my stupid intuition. Instinct had kept me alive so far. I put the portal device away. Time for Plan C-0: You Have To Talk To Humans Now (Last Resort).

Looking back, Plan C-0 was the first of many mistakes I would make that made the break-in way more complicated and dangerous than it needed to be.

~~~

A/N: Thank you for reading. Votes and comments are appreciated!