Outer Olympus

Outer Olympus: Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Like many buildings designed for the comfort of the rich, the Magistrate's mansion was a living space for many more than the Magistrate and his son. There were dozens of servants, chefs, technicians, and Enforcers who stayed in the building nearly twenty-four hours a day. Beyond the clearly immense demand on the time and lives of these types of people, the rich had another key requirement of the people who made their luxurious lives possible; whenever they could, remain out of sight. To facilitate this, over half of the square footage of the massive structure were corridors and rooms that Malcolm Paradigm, having lived here for nearly a decade, had never stepped foot in, and never would; passageways for the workers to move through without blocking the views of the expensive portraiture and statuary that lined the hallways Malcolm walked. It was in these forgotten hallways that Rune and Taroh crept towards the security room without even laying eyes on the party floor, moving past caterers gossiping with each other in the brief moments they had to themselves on a night that would surely run them ragged. Remaining completely invisible was no longer possible once inside the mansion, there were people almost everywhere. Not drawing attention was a different matter; people here were too busy to really pay attention. Rune was carrying Taroh's clipboard and moving briskly, Taroh was carrying a toolbox, these were elements of disguise that would not hold up to the scrutiny of anyone taking time to inspect them (why would there be children here?). They did, however, hold up to the much lower requirement of not looking out of place enough for anyone to bother doing anything about it when they had what was probably eighty minutes of work they needed to get done in the next hour. Nobody sought out complications on a day like this.

Rune used her body as cover so Taroh could quickly pick the lock of a small utility closet; it only took four seconds for his wave rake to defeat it, so to anyone not paying attention it looked like he had used a key. They both entered the room quietly, closing the door behind them. This was a low security room adjacent to the computer room for the building's security; a weak point they had identified from the blueprints. Rune pushed some boxes into place so she could stand and get to a vent near the top of the room, Taroh passed her a screwdriver to allow her to remove the covering. Cold air moved through the opening into a room on the other side, lit only by the blinking lights on the dozens of computer towers stored within. It'd be effortless for Rune to send a surge of lightning through the vent and destroy every bit of technology inside, but that was a recipe to immediately put security on high alert. She shone a flashlight through.

"I think we're good," she told Taroh with a slight smile, and he slipped out of the closet. The lock on the next room was much stronger than the closet's; even if he didn't have to lay low, it'd take him minutes to get through it. It would, however, only take seconds for Rune to telekinetically turn the door handle from the inside, immediately unlocking the one-way door. Taroh stepped inside, giving her a thumbs up. So far, the plan was going just like they had drawn it up.

Unlike the outing to Outpost Raven, there was no clever social engineering attack to get password access to these computers. This time, Taroh was going to have to do some actual genuine on the fly hacking. He produced his laptop from the toolbox he had carried, set it down, and plugged into the network. In the planning stages of this operation, he had budgeted twelve minutes to break through the computer security. That had been giving himself leeway in case it was harder than expected; in truth he thought he could do it in six, but it was good practice to base the plans around the worst case scenario.

He tried the low hanging fruit first. He loaded in data-drives set to automatically launch programs in the computer when inserted; these were immediately blocked from activating, as were his attempts to clone a keyboard and mouse input and simply remotely operate a computer. He didn't expect this to work, but it was always good to try the quick things first. Next was e-mail spoofs; he had downloaded the entire inbox of Outpost Raven and so had gotten a good idea of what an official internal Enforcer message looked like, he sent a number of false messages containing phishing links that would grant him access if clicked on. While he was waiting on that, he spun up a virtual machine and tried to get the network to accept it as another computer that had access and control, setting his password cracking algorithms to the test, trying to coerce a connection. Two minutes were down.

"Everything good?" Rune asked. She had never been forced to wait so close to a computer op before; her role in rebel actions was more typically kicking doors down, not subtly opening them.

"On schedule still," Taroh whispered back. He had noticed people giving him looks as he went in. He wanted to keep as quiet as possible. The number one weakness in not just this phase of the plan but the plan as a whole was the reliance on the assumption nobody would stop them or draw security's attention towards them. In this part of the city, the bounty on them wouldn't be big enough news for random caterers to recognize their faces, but he wasn't confident the same would be true for the Enforcers. He had done scores that required this kind of camouflage before, but it never felt good to just have to hope for the best. Geode had nearly scratched the mission over this vulnerability.

"Taroh, hide!" Rune hissed through the vent. Taroh wasted no time crawling into an empty space that was designed to hold a computer, grabbing his laptop and toolbox and dragging them in after him. A second later, he heard the sound of the door unlocking again, and then opening. The lights flickered on; he had left them off to reduce suspicion.

"You're sure someone went in here?" He heard a voice say through the familiar modulation of an Enforcer helmet. He held his breath, not wanting to make any noise. "I don't see anyone." Taroh hoped that meant the Enforcer would leave, but the footsteps entered the room, looking around. From his hiding place, Taroh could see armored boots walk past.

From the utility closet, Rune could see the Enforcer in full, could feel his anxiety (and Taroh's) as well as his boredom, a mélange of emotions of a man who really didn't want to look into this but also didn't want to be the guy who hadn't when something went wrong. Rune tensed her muscles, lighting flickering between her fingertips. Attacking him would immediately send the mission into shambles, but she'd do it if the alternative was letting Taroh get captured. She'd have to fight her way out, and hopefully Viola and Geode could arrange their own escapes in the chaos that would ensue.

Four minutes on Taroh's mission timer, and he was stuffed in a crevice rather than hacking. If this lasted much longer, it'd end up being a problem even if he didn't get captured; Geode was counting on him to break the garage security so they could begin their phase of the plan. If those doors weren't unlocked by the time they got there, they'd be in trouble. Five minutes. Taroh nearly gasped as the Enforcer nudged his toolbox with his foot, inches from finding him. Apparently, he presumed the toolbox was supposed to be there, because shortly after that, he finally left. Taroh breathed a sigh of relief, wiping sweat from his brow.

He crawled out, re-opened his laptop, and suppressed a giggle that risked giving himself way again. Despite all that, he was still going to make it in within his ambitious six-minute window. While he had been hiding in that cramped little space, one of the Enforcers within the security office had clicked one of the phishing links from his phony emails. He was in. Taroh smiled ear to ear as he toggled on the communicators that connected the whole team; a device they tried to use infrequently to avoid detection.

"Phase three complete," he announced. There was no reply, as the others wouldn't break silence over it. With a quick movement of fingers over his keyboard, he cleared the way for Geode's mission, then brought up all the cameras. He raised an eyebrow as he saw Viola chatting with someone who had to be the Magistrate's psychic son, judging from the white and gold Lightbringer robes he was wearing. That was quite the choice, but he trusted Viola to get the job done. The unfortunate thing about the busy nature of the party was he couldn't loop the cameras like he normally would; that worked on empty hallways, but not a setting where irregular movement was expected. A guard would notice that the camera's showed the same maidservant turning the corner every six seconds. Instead, all he could do was keep his eyes on things and provide whatever assistance he could figure out from here while his friends completed their objectives. He shook his head, and stretched out his legs. This waiting game, at least, would be more comfortable.