✏️ The Littlest Spy

31. Consequence

A little smile flickered across Isadora's face as she felt her feet sinking into the soft carpet. The pile was only a little thicker than the rest of the house, but somehow that was enough to make it feel special; like a welcoming plush blanket under her toes. In some strange way the nursery room felt like a kind of sanctum for her, a place where she was safe from all her worldly worries. Even when, like today, her reasons for being in here were all business. She walked slowly backwards, making methodical passes over the walls with her phone. And, just as she expected, the sensor readings were exactly what she expected them to be. There were no transmitters or recording devices in here, nothing that could indicate the presence of a passive transducer, and no traffic unaccounted for on the wifi.

When she was sure that everything was in order, Isadora sat cross-legged on the floor, and pulled out her pink laptop from the bottom of the toy chest. It was set to use a child profile; all the adult apps locked away behind a password. And that made it just a little easier to secure some of the software on there without making the presence of security suspicious. The main account was encrypted; maybe just to make her childhood roleplay feel more realistic, not allowing her to use serious apps; or maybe to hide all their research into the Arrencani family.

When everything was unlocked, she quickly checked for messages on the Voodoo Board. On the surface, it was a social site like manty others on the Internet: filled to the brim with pictures of other people's cats and insane theories about popular politicians. But beneath the surface, Voodoo Board held something very different. Because to someone with the right client software, there were additional messages hidden in the metadata. It was a perfect means for communicating with operatives in the field, because even if the encryption keys were somehow compromised, an eavesdropper would be unlikely to know how to read the real data.

Isadora took five minutes to look over the active all-operatives bulletins; of which there were few. And then she read the message that they had been waiting for since the evening of the Home Owners' Committee meeting. She scanned the text, and then her eyes widened. Maybe she should have expected this, but somehow it had never crossed her mind. She'd thought they might get some useful information from Agency databases, but the response was much more dramatic.

"Daddy?" she called out; playing the role of someone who wanted to be a little girl. Then she pushed open the nursery door, and called out again. "Daddy! Come look at this!"

The subterfuge wasn't really necessary; she knew they were alone in the house. But as Brock kept telling her, it was good to get into the right habits. When she was in the nursery, their cover story was that Estelle was playing at being a little kid. So it would be better if she could keep up that illusion, just in case the less-secure parts of the house were ever surveilled.

"What is it, honey?" Brock called back. "Do you want to show me what you did with your toys?" Those words were suggestive, but didn't explicitly say anything. Just the kind of thing Bernard Klein might say, in an attempt to keep his wife's little secret from any casual observers. But a few minutes later he was coming down the stairs two at a time, the door shaking in time with his footsteps. And then it opened slowly, and Brock's face appeared. Isadora plastered a happy, childish grin on her face; just imagining that someone could possibly be watching them for just one moment.

As soon as he was inside the nursery, she sat back and gestured towards the screen.

"What's up?" Brock asked. "Reply from the geeks at Millennium House?"

"Y...yeah..." Isadora responded, trying not to take offence at the term. Until recently she had been one of those desk-bound geeks, and she would have done anything to earn a little more respect from the operatives in the field. But a part of her suspected that Brock understood how much work was involved in research; and there was no insult intended in his choice of words.