Amanita: Poison Shot

Chapter 33: Ticks and Spiders

What a soft way to put it! Well, I coveted that information myself. Everybody I knew did. If I succeeded, I would know where both my mother's and my brother's corpses had been taken.

"I've been able to place you as an extra maid for the weekends at Sappho Residence," she went on. "You won't be the only maid there. The other maids do not belong to our organisation, so you can't trust them. As for your job at the cosmetic surgery centre, it's your decision, whether you continue working there or not. This new job would initially be only on weekends, with a probationary period of a month. If all goes well, you could even work there seven days a week in the long run."

"I didn't expect that," I replied. "All right. I'll do it."

"Good," she replied with satisfaction. "You start tomorrow morning, at nine. Here: two state-of-the-art devices made by me and the maid uniform you need to wear." She handed me those objects. "All are equally important."

"What are these little gadgets?" I asked curiously as I examined the two tiny mechanical animals that Agape had put in my hands, watching them closely. They were smaller than a low-value coin.

"This one is a tick, and the other one's a spider," she replied with pride. "I designed them myself. Ticks look for electronic devices involved in security protocols, and they work independently. They're not monitored by default, but they can be. They stick to the device, hack it so that it does not give any alarm signal, and then it infects it like a virus until it makes the device useless. Then, it self-destructs by melting and fusing its body to the infected device, leaving no trace. It's great for disabling alarms and password-protected stuff as if there was a simple but undetected software error, for example."

Wow. She created that little wonder of technology. I had never seen anything like it.

"Spiders, on the other hand, look for electronic devices to copy information. You target the device, get as close to it as you can –at least ten feet away, no walls or doors in between, though–, and let them work. In the meantime, you can do other stuff, or get an alibi so that you don't become a suspect in case they can detect whether their systems have been hacked and whether some information has been accessed without proper authorisation. Spiders leave no trace, either, so you're safe. But you just never know with these motherfuckers, right? Especially now that we're their number one enemy."

She smiled wickedly.

"So, spiders. When they're done, they're gone. They come back to you where you let them go. When using your spider, remember to pick it up. Spiders can't walk great distances; otherwise, their batteries die and the info is lost. Remember: ten feet max, no walls, closed doors or windows between you, your spider, and your target. Understood?"

"Yes, Agape."

Things were getting interesting, and her gadgets were awesome. I couldn't take my eyes off those little wonders.

"You should probably have a few of both of them on you. You'll have more storage capacity if you use several spiders at the same time. Here," she said while handing me a few more. "You should also have a parrot, the device to hack chips," she told me with a know-it-all expression while showing me one. Like Siegfried's, it looked like a self-defence taser. "I fancied giving them such a name because it's a classic element of piracy, and besides, it makes nanochips repeat the things you've chosen for them to say, harmless stuff. Here, your own parrot."

She handed me one, and I took it with care.

"Use it only in emergencies," she pointed out seriously. "The more users on my alternative network for hacked chips, the fuller and more dangerous for all of us it will be. If the system gets overloaded with more users, it will crash, and then we would all be exposed to the GSNS network again, okay? They would catch us, torture, and kill us all. I'm in the process of upgrading the system to be able to give better and wider coverage, but it will still take some time."