Anarchy of the Mice

Prologue

Piper Jackson didn't like the look that passed between her brother and the plant foreman, Mr. Sampson. She stood by them at a floor-to-ceiling window in the foreman's office. Twelve stories down, a pair of police cruisers and van with municipal markings had entered the circle drive.

"Marcus." Mr. Sampson backed away from the glass. "Can you get to the stuff?"

"Yeah yeah, on it." Her brother pivoted for the door. "Dumpster?"

"Right." Mr. Sampson ran to his computer, fingers jittery on the keys. "No! No they'll check the dumpster—do cellar. Cellar's better."

Piper eyed the pair of men. Well, one man. One almost a man, her brother. Nineteen.

She was seventeen. "What're you typing? Why are you running to the cellar?"

Mr. Sampson stayed focused on the screen. He pecked the keyboard standing up, tall like Marcus but stocky. Handyman mustache.

Marcus said from the threshold, "You didn't do nothing, Sis, remember."

Then he bolted.

Piper checked the window. Below, the cruisers had parked crookedly end-to-end. A woman burst from the van with a clipboard. She pulled on a hairnet, tucking in strands as she tossed hairnets to each of four officers, all hurrying for the entrance.

"I asked a question," Piper said.

Mr. Sampson finished typing something. Whatever it was, it didn't work. He cursed and banged the computer mouse.

"Stupid thing won't let me in. Can you get this file deleted, I go deal with this?"

"With what."

"This! These...ah, inspectors. Dang it. I gotta go. You try to delete the file?"

Piper said she would. He stabbed out one last command, got honked at again, then rushed off. She tailed him to the hall where footsteps cracked like rifle-shot from either end, Marcus beating it down stairs, Mr. Sampson to the elevator.

She walked to the computer. The file Mr. Sampson had been clicking was named Q3productionCosts_true.

Why exactly would a person stick "_true" at the end of a filename?

Piper's emotions were caught between vindication, dread, and plain old anger. She knew it—the second Marcus had been promoted out of mail to manufacturing trainee, even with the arrests, four lousy months on the job. The leading producer of organic food in North America was going to trust her brother: a kid with no college and a rap sheet?

Mom told her to quit being negative. "They're investing in this city. They want to keep jobs in America. Why not Marcus?"

Then they made him full-time. Two months later, he was deputy production manager. Manager? That was supposed to be legit?

Piper tried opening Q3productionCosts_true and got the same error Mr. Sampson must have.

FILE IN USE BY ANOTHER USER.

She logged in with the admin credentials they'd granted her for the summer. Piper was unpaid. Mr. Sampson had needed somebody to de-crud his departmental computers but had no budget, so Marcus had suggested Piper. She had computer skills to burn but not the school kind, meaning this "internship" was the best she could do resume-wise.

Decent gig. In this new economy, sometimes you had to scrap.

A simple scan showed which workstation was using the file. Piper remote-desktopped in, closed Microsoft Excel. Switched back to Mr. Sampson's machine and deleted the file.