The Liberation Paradox

Red Handed and Zipper Down

Danny

18:11

(2hrs, 57min remaining)

Mika was sound asleep as Danny very carefully held her phone against her skin. Mika's phone was one of the fancier models which used DNA biometrics to identify its user. The phone detected Mika and unlocked itself.

Danny accessed the phone's file system and entered Marcio's secret command to bring up the hidden partition of the phone's memory. It was on this small region of the phone's memory that Marcio had stored all the data he'd stolen from The Mushroom's servers. The secret commands only brought the AI which protected the data out of hiding. To actually access the data, a password was still required.

A password entry dialog box popped up on the phone's screen. Marcio had told Danny during their first call that morning, when they were planning the job, how to access the data. The kid had been nervous about telling Danny, but Danny had insisted on it. He'd told the kid he wanted to verify the data was actually still on the phone before they left the Paradox Hotel, which was true, but it was only half the truth. Danny had his own reasons for wanting to access the data.

Now, Danny entered the password Marcio had given him into the dialog box. He'd expected the password to be something very complex and hard to guess. But the password revealed that there was some dimension to Marcio that Danny had yet to understand. He would have to find out about that if they didn't die today.

Within seconds of entering the password, the hidden data on Mika's phone opened like a flower for Danny. It was a huge, almost indecipherable trove of accounting data. Records of monies coming in from a multitude of sources and going out to yet another multitude of destinations. There was way too much data here for Danny to make sense of at the moment. Whatever story these numbers told, Danny had no doubt would prove a compelling one.

He popped the bottom button off of his electrician's shirt. He wouldn't be needing that shirt anymore. He'd already discovered that The Mushroom kept a walk-in closet full of very expensive designer suits in his girlfriend's apartment. The Mushroom and he weren't the exact same size, but they were close enough that Danny would be able to leave the Paradox more well-dressed than he'd entered. He figured Daniau owed him a suit after wrecking his Louka Pascal suit last night.

The button he'd removed from the electrician's shirt was actually a clever bit of spy tech. It was a small data storage device disguised as a shirt button. It had plenty of capacity to hold all of the data Marcio had secreted away on Mika's phone. Danny had found the button drive in a small shop a couple platforms over which specialized in easy-to-conceal tech. Now, he set the phone to copying the stolen data onto the button drive. Whatever else happened, Danny would have his own copy. It was valuable data and he would find someone to buy it.

While the data transferred, he dropped the rest of the electrician's shirt into the garbage can atop the wreckage of the condom he'd gotten from Norbert Marshall's wallet early that morning. The ancient prophylactic had ruptured at the most inopportune moment. Guess the expiration date was important after all.

He checked to make sure that Mika was still sleeping. He didn't want her to wake up before the data was finished copying onto his button drive. Far from being the spoiled princess he'd been expecting, she was an extremely intelligent woman. It was too bad The Mushroom didn't appreciate her. Men like that never did.

After only a few minutes, the data was done copying. He re-locked Mika's phone and padded naked into the closet where The Mushroom kept his clothes. If this was just an ancillary closet of clothes he kept in his girlfriend's apartment, Danny could only imagine what the crime lord's main closet in his own apartment must look like. The spacious, walk-in closet in Mika's apartment, completely separate from her own closet, was like a small men's clothing store. And not a cheap one, either. Danny saw suits of all the major designers, jewelry, shoes, an impressive selection of ties. He even found an Emiliano Piazza tuxedo. This tux was worth $10,000 if it was worth a cent. Danny glanced at the clock and decided it would soon be late enough in the evening for a tuxedo.