It was not the first time Tony Xu (PhD, or doctor philosophiae ) had worked on-site security, tablet in hand and radio tucked into a vest pocket.
Was it a little beneath him? Perhaps. Was it a little dangerous? Marginally so — the actual odds of an intrusion in his vicinity, when modern transporter tech allowed incursion practically anywhere, were negligible. Was it a little thrilling, even so? Undeniably.
Xu kept an eye on the hallway as he swiped through the cam feed overview, then double-checked the status of his backdoors. You never knew when you might need to get creative.
He nodded politely at a security guard as they crossed each other in the hallway. Physical security was sparse, evenly distributed throughout the mostly-empty building, but ready to react at a moment's notice. One of the necessities of the post-teleportation age.
Downstairs, the party continued to buzz, drunken socialites swaying to corporate-approved tunes in increasing states of inebriation.
He was hardly one to judge — he'd served the sentence of his fair share of these parties back in the day. He refused to fall into bed with Sankaku's R&D branch as a matter of principle, so the occasional shred of dignity sacrificed to charming private investors (well — more private than a megacorp spanning a quarter of the globe, at any rate) had been the way to go.
These days, the odd bit of freelance work was doing a wonderful job paying for his more out-there experimental ventures, not to mention the extracurriculars. It offered an incredible degree of freedom, and the risks were negligible as long as he didn't do anything stupid.
Gradually, he worked his way up the floors. There was precious little of value in the middle levels of the building — various conference rooms to be rented out, and such. Any threat would likely come at the bottom, where the high-value guests were partying, or at the top, where the owner of the establishment chose to keep his little antiques collection. Including his prize jewel, an early 20th century tiara inlaid with crystalline bismuth too brittle to be worn even on rare occasions. Very aesthetically pleasing, or so the rumours went.
It was a good thing Xu was only interested in tech, and data, or he might have been tempted towards the aforementioned stupidity. What a prominent K&O stockholder would want with a bismuth tiara was anyone's guess.
A red flag on his monitoring device caught his attention. Voltage spikes on consoles usually didn't mean anything. The odds that someone was trying to siphon cryptocurrency through one at this very moment were, after all, vanishingly slim.
He glanced into the room, wondering if he should call for backup. To his satisfaction, it was empty, the console—
The console had just finished a reboot cycle. He hmmmed.
Xu heard a rustle of cloth and turned to look down the barrel of a D.A.R.T. gun. He stiffened.
"Wait," he said reflexively, raising up his hands.
The intruder with the gun paused. "Why?" she asked.
Xu eyed the weapon, just to be certain he'd read the make correctly. "Well, I would rather not spend the rest of my night in a drugged daze, if it's all the same to you. And I may have something to offer to you that makes your night easier."
She sized him up with a sharp eye.
"Ya've the run of the infosec side of things here, do ya?"
He nodded.
"Best be talking fast, then. Make yer offer."
Xu carefully took his eyes off the gun and got a good look at her. The girl was pale, dark-haired, and if she was a day over twenty then the baggy black trench on her was certainly not helping her look it. Beneath it, she was wearing some kind of cocktail dress. He could hazard a guess she had slipped into this party through the front door, and was perhaps planning to slip back out the same way.
Her face was sharp but pretty, like a ceremonial knife from a particularly no-nonsense ancient culture, and her Irish accent was thick enough to form its own branch of Catholicism.
He took it all in with the speed of survival, and replied, "You'll need to get past the security system, yes? I can help you out. Help you find whatever it is you're looking for without having it be easily traced back to either of us." He gestured very slightly as he spoke, to obscure the fact that his fingertips were subtly navigating a menu on his retinal HUD projection. To him, it hung clear as day in the air, but fortunately for his survival prospects, all she would see was some hand twitching that he was doing his best not to be suspicious about.
"I have official access to a good deal of the network." He paused and smirked. "Unofficially, I have access to quite a bit more of it."
The tip of his finger found the panic key that would alert security, and hovered over it. With any luck, she wasn't well-versed enough in neural interface tech to notice what he was doing.
She glanced at his hands. Her eyes narrowed and she tightened the grip on the gun. "Keep twitchin' like tha' and it won't be ending well for ya," she warned. Xu dutifully froze.
Nevermind the luck, then.
"Look. I can switch off almost any firewall you specify, so you don't have to worry about getting through them. You'll be able to walk around freely. Isn't that something you want?"
Her eyes took on a worrying, devilish glint. Briefly — again — he worried she'd shoot him, and then who knew where or if he'd be waking up again? Belatedly, it occurred to him he was still not offering any guarantees he wouldn't call security on her the moment he was out of sight. He needed a— a gesture. He needed to implicate himself.
"Takin' down the firewalls so I don't have to worry?" she drawled. "Sorry, I've no interest. Where would the craic in that be?"
On a whim, and trembling with adrenaline, Xu tapped at a different key. "Well, in that case I've just disabled them anyway," he said briskly. "Would you like me to turn them back on again? I could even increase them for you, if you'd like," he added pleasantly.
The intruder stared at him. Without lowering her gun, she pulled a hacked-together-looking tablet out of her pocket, lifted it so it was level with the gun, and glanced at it. She looked back at Xu, and he gave her a light smile. That's right, every firewall on this level had just gone offline. It was definitely suspicious, especially given the fact that he was technically not supposed to be able to do this — rebooting devices one a time was about the limit of his de jure capabilities.
He'd have a hard time explaining this, later, assuming there would be a later.
She was still staring at him. "You're a bit shit at your job, are ya?" she asked, with an incredulous little shake of her head.
Xu very slowly lowered his hands until they were relaxed by his sides. She let him. "For the right reasons, I can be," he said pointedly. "I'm sure you understand, I could have easily called the alarm just now. Consider that a gesture of good will."
She peered at him with suspicion. She lowered the gun slowly but kept it in her hand. "So what's yer price? Ye want a cut of the job?"
"No, I'm not interested in money."
She looked him up and down and rolled her eyes. "Of course ya aren't. So what is it ya do want, then?"
"Two things. First, to emerge from this with my reputation — not to mention my skin — well intact. Meaning I don't want my current client to think I've failed in my assignment—"
"Even though ya just turned off—"
"Even though I just turned off this level's firewalls, yes, precisely. Second, there are some files on one of the auxiliary servers here regarding a branch of K&O facilities and their security details. I would very much like a copy of those files for my own use."
"Ya work here, don't ya? Why not just get them yerself?"
"I was going to. Later in my contract, with some more preparation — obviously, I'd need to go to great lengths to make sure the leak isn't traced back to me, or my days of working freelance security are over. But your presence here provides an opportunity to get it done much sooner, and save me a good deal of work."
"Because whatever happens, ya can pin it on me and my break-in."
"Precisely."
And it would be more exciting this way, he didn't add. The teenaged criminal holding him at gunpoint probably didn't need to know about his adrenaline problem.
"What do ya want with the files?" Here, she looked attentive and serious. Xu had to wonder at the interest. Most likely, she wanted to know how valuable they were, and if they might prove a better bounty than whatever she came here for. Or perhaps she had a heart somewhere in those folds upon folds of overcoat, and wanted some assurance he wasn't planning on bombing an orphanage. The truth was a lot more mundane than either of those things.
Xu told her.
By the time he'd gotten through the first half of the explanation, her eyes had started to glaze over and she was visibly stifling a yawn. Finally she put a hand up to stop him.
"Ya've got a bit of a mouth on you, have ya? Got some kind of aug on ya that puts people to sleep?"
"Nothing I wasn't born with."
"Now there's a terror."
"If you'd like me to finish explaining—"
"I'll pass. I get the yoke of it. Boring data science stuff, yadda yadda."
"That's not exactly— the practical applications alone are—" He saw her expression and gathered himself. "Well, at any rate. Do we have a deal?"
"Not so fast. I'm still not seeing a compelling reason not to have ya knocked out and put in a cupboard. I can get through yer security without ya—"
"I wouldn't be so sure—"
"Tell me why I need ya for this."
"Well, as it happens, that's the best part," Xu said confidently, the sales pitch having finally coalesced somewhere in the back of his mind. " I can do more than get you through the firewalls — or not, whatever it is your challenge-seeking little heart desires," he hastened to add. "Now, I assume you're here for the tiara, yes? You must be, you seem like the type who'd want to... make a statement. Now, the historical piece of jewellery you're after has a hologram duplicate. They're swapped out when it's lent out for display in a museum somewhere. Very few people know about this, or that the hologram duplicate even exists, but fortunately for you, I am one of them."
"Yer suggesting we steal the original and put the holo in the case instead." She caught on quick and was nodding with excitement.
"Precisely. This obscures the theft, meaning the trail will be that much colder by the time it's discovered. Assuming we cover our tracks."
"Not bad. Did ya just come up with this plan in the time since I took ya at gunpoint?"
Xu chuckled self-consciously. "I wish I could say that, but no. I couldn't help but brainstorm about this in my days working here, but I had no intention of setting it in motion."
"I do that with places I visit all the time," she agreed, almost dreamily. Then she grinned in a way that she probably thought made her look dangerous, rather than exceedingly baby-faced. "Of course, I'm a thief. A dedicated lowlife. Ya seem like yer trying to be the respectable sort, though." He shrugged at that — guilty as charged. "One thing I don't understand, though. Won't ya be on the hook for this? As one of those few people who knows of it?"
"Ah, but officially, I don't know of this," Xu smiled. "When they do discover the theft, the few people who are aware of the replica will be the first suspected. They'll assume it was an inside job, possibly orchestrated by someone with fairly high K&O clearance. It will be a while before they pursue any other leads."
"I'm starting to like ya. But don't ya be getting ideas now, I'm still not after making up my mind will I be bringing ya along."
"You can't be serious. What must I, a total stranger, do to prove myself to you?" he said dryly.
She took a few steps toward him, cautiously enough. She lowered the gun and extended her other hand. Xu looked at it studiouly. It was empty, and smelled vaguely of spilled champagne.
"Yer supposed to shake it, ya eejit. Look me in the eye and tell me ya won't screw me over as soon as my back is turned."
Xu grasped it carefully and met her gaze. He'd never been tempted to use the term 'old soul' before, but there was no other way to describe it. Whether it was the real thing or a carefully cultivated street persona, though, was anyone's guess.
"I won't," he said earnestly. "As long as you don't give me a reason to, that is. Is that acceptable to you?"
She squeezed his hand like someone used to shaking hands with hardened criminals, not university professors. He tried not to wince and failed, to her obvious glib delight.
"Deal," she nodded. She let go of his hand and clapped him on the shoulder with a grin. "Alright then, Mister Acceptable. Let's go and have us a caper, shall we?" She holstered the gun.
He was glad she hadn't insisted they spit on it, at least.