The corridors were empty save for the odd bit of clunky-looking modern art. Xu tapped away on his tablet, occasionally glancing up.
"What are ya up to?" the thief now walking beside him asked. The marble floor was difficult to move quietly on, but she was managing it incredibly well. He could barely hear her footsteps at all, even right next to her. Perhaps he needed better shoes. Or, more candidly, a decade of leading whatever kind of life she led.
"I'm restoring the firewalls I took down during our conversation. It made for an effective gesture, but it would look suspicious if they simultaneously came down for too long without good cause. A brief lapse, however, can be explained away."
He finished what he was doing and looked up at her.
"Do you have a name?" he asked. "I'm not looking to make acquaintances, mind you, only for convenience—"
"Banks."
"They call you Banks?"
"They don't, but they'll be starting to real soon."
"A thief with something to prove. Terrific."
"And what's yers then?"
"Zach. Zachary Li, but you may call me Zach," he answered smoothly.
"That's not what it says on yer ID," she replied in sing-song, drawing his eye. She was looking through the contents of a wallet with some interest. A closer, more alarmed glance revealed to him that it was his own.
Xu stuck his hand into his empty pocket.
"Impressive," he said.
"Still don't trust me, do ya? That's grand. Maybe ya've got more brains on ya than ya fancy educated types usually have."
"Speaking of education, shouldn't you be at school somewhere?" he said curtly. From this close he could see how strikingly smooth her face was, and felt old, just a little. Even at thirty-three, his forties had never before felt quite so loomingly close. Also, considering it was nighttime, it was probably not the best of his biting retorts.
She waved the D.A.R.T. "Still got the gun on me. Don't push it now, doc."
At Xu's look, she grinned. "Can I not call ya doc? Says right here yer some sort of doctor." She waved his ID at him again.
"Not that kind of doctor, I'm afraid," Xu said dryly. "Any chance you could give that back to me?"
"If ya behave, maybe I will. Now watch it, there's a camera right around the next corner-"
"Ah, that. If you'll allow me..."
He gestured for them to stop, bringing out his tablet again. He tapped at a panel on his prosthetic arm and the sheeting slid free, revealing a secret compartment from which he fished out a small chip and proceeded to insert it into the tablet. Banks's eyes lit up with interest.
"What have ya got there?"
"A bit of black market code, including some I whipped up especially for this. Most pertinently, a neural network that will allow us to bypass the cameras using a backdoor I built in."
"How's it work?"
"It loops the output feed of the cameras while caching the true feed and transmitting it to my tablet."
"So they can't see the feed, but we can?"
"Correct."
"And they won't know ya're doing it?"
Xu hesitated. Banks raised an eyebrow. "...Correct again," he said after a moment.
"Ya don't sound too sure."
"Obviously, it doesn't actually stop them from accessing the camera feeds, and even the louts at K&O do have brain cells and basic observational skills. They won't know we're doing it so long as we take care not to draw their attention to the discrepancy. So, on the assumption that neither of us does anything sloppy, no."
That seemed to satisfy her, because she had stuck her hands into her pockets and was once again eying his tablet with interest.
"Well, that's pretty slick then, doc. Any chance ya'd be willing to trade code later?"
Xu smiled indulgently. "I'm afraid this particular trick only works on the condition that I've had the run of the system in advance. Not very flexible. But I'm sure we can talk shop later, if you're so inclined."
Ordinarily he would have elaborated quite a bit further into why he was confident he would get away with this, and no doubt Banks would appreciate that explanation, but it would also slow things down.
They slipped past the camera — Banks was reluctant to follow him across its sights, until she stuck out a foot and then another limb or two and nothing happened. Another patrol came their way. Xu stayed where he was and exchanged a stoic nod a few words of chit-chat with the tired-looking security guard, while Banks disappeared for a bit before slinking back next to him later.
Even so, they kept their voices hushed, and every so often Banks would drift a few paces ahead, scouting forward with a lightfootedness that impressed him.
"Those files ya want to hit," she said, doubling back to keep pace with him. "Where they at?"
"The high-security zone on the sixth floor."
"Same place as the tiara. Convenient."
"I suppose they never did learn not to put all their eggs in one basket..."
Banks hummed, and made a detour to a console in order to, best as he could tell, siphon funds from it with a dinky-looking chip. Xu stood on the lookout, taking a moment to do his actual job and monitor the mainframe for threats other than the one directly under his nose. Glancing back at the thief, he wondered idly why he did not feel particularly guilty over his involvement. After all, this was... new to him, wasn't it? He'd never stolen anything on his various side trips — at least if one abided by the philosophy that merely copying digital data did not constitute an act of theft, a definition every single public and private law enforcement agency in the world would disagree with in the strongest possible terms. So, he'd never stolen anything, and yet here he was, aiding and abetting and very much being an accessory. Perhaps it was that the sheer scale of K&O and their various partners and subsidiaries was so monumental that it seemed so much like a victimless crime.
(On some level, he knew he was kidding himself, and that all philosophical considerations aside, K&O would not see things quite so charitably. But that was a rather dour line of thinking, and a problem for future him.)
"So," Banks said, snapping him out of his reveries. She seemed done with the console and looked quite cheerful. Xu made a mental note not to access it with any of his own hardware before doing a thorough decontamination, and oh, she was still talking, wasn't she?
"Could you repeat the question?" he said.
Banks rolled her eyes. "I said, how'd ya find out about all this, anyway? Those files ya want. The tiara, the duplicate. And so on and so forth."
"Ah," Xu nodded, collecting his frazzled thoughts again. "I had nothing to do, and so I went poking around. It usually takes me a fraction of the time I'm contracted for to actually implement the changes they need, but they get very upset if I leave again that quickly. A bit of busywork goes a long way, reassures them they're receiving the full benefit of what they paid for."
"Meanwhile, yer looking in places ya shouldn't be and putting in backdoors for yerself. Yer a straight-up crook, are ya?"
Xu gave her a confused smile. "Thank you, I think."
He wondered what it was about her that was compelling him to be quite so candid, but it probably said nothing good about his general life expectancy.
"Eyes up, doc," she said, slipping to hide behind a decorative statue stretching from floor to ceiling. "There's another patrol up ahead."
"Well, here we are then," Banks said. They both stopped in front of the door.
Said door looked quite forbidding. It was sturdier than the usual kind, and the electronic lock was visibly bulkier so as to deter physical methods of subversion. While not outwardly visible, Xu knew there was an alarm built directly into the frame, the old-fashioned kind with a loud siren in it.
The high-clearance area, the tiara, and the server he was after were all somewhere behind this door.
Xu frowned. "I'm not cleared for this area. I'm afraid my access card has taken us as far as it can go."
"More's the pity," Banks said. She did not look worried in the slightest. If anything, she looked a little smug, with a side of nervousness. "Wait," she said suddenly, her eyes widening. "Ya said yer not cleared for here. Don't ya have a thingmajig on ya? For tracking?"
Xu knew exactly what she meant - whether the company was monitoring his footsteps. Smiling, he shook his head. "One of the joys of being freelance. Trackers are for long-term employees of the company only — on anyone else, they're considered an additional risk of corporate espionage. Hence — no tracker, no retinal feed, and no heart monitor."
He immediately regretted saying that last one out loud — it was usually not a good idea to inform an intruder that they could freely murder you with fewer immediate repercussions than usual. Unfortunately, impulse control had never been his strong suit. He cleared his throat.
"But that is a moot point if we don't find some other way past this door. There might be a maintenance or ventilation access we can use — more likely you than me, I would imagine. Or, if I can get at the wiring, then maybe—"
Interrupting his rambling, Banks reached across him and swiped a card in the scanner before could object.
To his immense relief, it beeped and glowed a reassuring green. There was a satisfying little click from the lock.
"...Huh," he said.
"Palmed this off Inspector Gadget, downstairs," she grinned, shouldering through the door and showishly holding it open for him. "Come on in."
Xu slipped through apprehensively, following her at a close pace. They were no longer in his domain, and it was making him a little nervous. "Isn't that risky? He is bound to miss it."
She smiled proudly. "It's just a copy. I cloned it and brang the original back to him in seconds. He never even noticed it was gone."
"It's almost like you prepared for this," Xu said dryly.
"I'm just glad it worked. Doorlock cryptography is a pain," she grumbled. "And decent decryptors these days are too bulky to get through security."
"Yes, hard to conceal in a cocktail dress, I would imagine."
"I wouldn't be expecting yer type to understand. Yer black tie wear has pockets."
"There are dresses with pockets, too," Xu pointed out, but acquiesced that gender equality in crime still had a ways to go. "You know," he said, blinking as he remembered a journal he'd read, "most of the bulk of decryptors is the insulation and battery. There have been recent advances for compact high-end decryption powered by bioelectricity. A security scan would have a hard time picking up on it, depending on where you installed it."
"I'm not much one for sticking bits of metal in me," she said dismissively, but her face was thoughtful. Then she stopped and held up a hand. "Hold on. Should be a laser grid up ahead, according to the blueprint."
You have a blueprint? , Xu almost asked but controlled the surge of envy in time to preserve his dignity. Of course she had a blueprint. She had prepared for this, after all. He'd been unable to procure one without stirring more dust than he cared to risk.
They went around the corner, and there it was. The laser grid, its tightly-packed horizontal beams angry and sizzling.
"I've read that they can burn through an organic arm in approximately half a second of uninterrupted contact," Xu's trivia brain chose to volunteer at that inopportune moment.
"Shut up," she said. Intent on the laser grid, she seemed to be waiting for something, and shushed him irritably when he tried to speak again.
There was another bit of trivia he recalled. Whether by serendipity or poor design, K&O's brand of laser panels had spectacular stopping force, but was quite vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse disruptions. They had yet to patch that particular weakness.
After a short while, Banks scowled. "There's supposed to be a defect in it, a two-second flicker every other minute. I paid good money for that bit of intel."
Xu watched the laser grid for another moment. "Well, I'm afraid you may have gotten scammed," he said. He set his bag down on the floor and reached into a compartment reasonably well-hidden in the lining.
"Blueprint was good, card cloner worked like a charm, I suppose something had to give," Banks was grumbling. "Be just as well if this is the only thing that— what's that yer doing, doc?"
It was Xu's turn to shush her as he laid out and assembled the delicate panels. He'd practised this so much that it only took him a minute. Banks watched him do it, then knelt down to squint at the contraption before giving a low whistle.
"Is that an EMP pack? But it's so wee!"
"I miniaturised it myself," Xu said, in a tone he hoped came off as sedate. Now was not the time to be showing off.
"I could never get the hang of using these things. And I didn't often have a chance to."
"The interface is not exactly user or beginner-friendly," he agreed.
He neglected to mention that he had replaced said interface with one that didn't rankle his sense of poor and needlessly complicated design every time he used it. Maybe it was best to keep at least one ace up his sleeve for a change.
He set the EMP pack close to the laser grid's emission panel and mouthed off the countdown. On the count of five, there was a little thwomp and a prickly wave went all the way up his prosthetic arm. The laser beams sputtered and died. He scooped up the EMP pack and held it to his chest like a rescued kitten as he and Banks dashed across.
Almost immediately, he saw the server room he was looking for on the right, blocked only by a heavy glass door - it seemed that the high-clearance door and the laser grid were supposed to be the bulk of security.
While Banks spotted a console in the corner and scuttled off to take advantage of it, Xu drifted through the room, checking the server labels until he found one with the serial number he'd been looking for. Opening the hidden compartment in his arm again, he removed a flash drive that held a custom-written brute-force and data-scraping program, and nearly 2 TB of free space.
"They had the good sense to airgap these," he said. "Oh well."
He inserted the flash drive and left it there, sticking out of the server port like a tick. It felt a little risky to leave it there, but it was rather hard to spot. With any luck, the program will have wrapped up by the time they stopped here on their way back.
He reconvened with Banks in the corridor, and they both turned to look when the laser grid came back online with an angry hiss. Xu checked the cooldown timer on the EMP pack. Their way back was, for now, firmly cut off.
The way to the tiara was up ahead.
"Well then." He turned to Banks. "Shall we?"
Glass windows stretched from wall to wall, but the blinds were down. A lavish desk, some ornate sculptures, a chess table that looked more ornamental than anything. A bookcase stretching along one of the walls.
And towards the back of the room, the tiara.
Xu checked his network scanner, and Banks her blueprints. Cautiously, they approached.
The tiara was on a cushion in a glass case with a in-built light in the lid. In the soft, diffuse glow of it, the tiara glinted and the tiara shimmered.
Xu had never actually seen crystallised bismuth before. Colours warped into each other in a prismatic flux, gleaming in elegant 90-degree spirals akin to Greek meanders. Someone from a century past might have mistaken it for the intricate inner workings of a computer, which was the aspect he personally enjoyed the most.
It was, true to reputation, very aesthetically pleasing. Despite the pressure of time, they both stopped to stare at it, transfixed.
He turned to Banks.
"I don't suppose there's any chance—"
"Nope. It's mine."
"I see. Pity."
They turned back to the prize and stared a little more.
"Never seen a bismuth tiara before," Banks said eventually.
"I'm not surprised. It is a very brittle metal. Hardly the best material for jewellery."
"Valuable, though, innit?"
"Oh no, the metal itself is practically worthless. You could melt down some bismuth to make this kind of crystal in your average kitchen in a few hours."
She peered at him. "Yer just trying to convince me it's not actually valuable so ya can make off with it yerself."
Xu laughed, oddly flattered by such nefarious assumptions. "I never said it wasn't valuable, only that the raw material isn't. I believe some socialite or other was murdered while wearing it to a party during the First Great Depression, and its next owner committed suicide. This was simply the 1930s being the 1930s, you understand, but the tiara acquired a reputation of being fashionably cursed and went through a series of auctions and price hikes that were ultimately just a form of money laundering, as much of the art trade is. At this point, its mere age, combined with its brittleness, sets it apart. It is strange what kind of things drive an object to have value, sometimes."
Banks stared at him like she couldn't decide if she was impressed or disturbed by his knowledge of morbid historical trivia. She was hardly the first.
"...For sure," she agreed finally. "It really is."
They got back to work. The hologram duplicate was where Xu had hoped it would be, locked in an unconspicuous cabinet above the bookshelf — locked with an actual key, no less, which meant Banks was able to smugly show off her old-fashioned lockpicking skills. The glass case itself was a standard container that should reboot if hit with an EMP, but the owner, it seemed, had gone the extra mile — the magnetic reinforcements on the case would take the brunt of it unless disabled first.
Banks grumbled to herself and dug into her pocket. She sifted through a small collection of scrappy-looking buster chips before settling on one she liked, and inserted it into the emergency override port. At her signal, Xu unsheathed his manual EMP generator and connected it to the case. A little bzzt, and the case went dark, the light flickering off. He gave her a nod, and Banks lifted the glass top.
The rest was straightforward enough.
It was a very convincing hologram, he had to admit, scrutinising it in the case now that power to it had been restored. Any irregularities in the visuals were easily concealed by the glass, and the hum of the small hologenerator was too faint to hear even up close.
Banks, meanwhile, had reached into her bag for some packaging paper and bubble wrap and begun to bundle the tiara up.
"Careful, it's brittle," Xu said.
"Heard ya the first time."
Xu stood back, satisfied as he watched her swaddle the treasure with the care one would afford a newborn child.
"It occurs to me," he said, "that this was, in hindsight, a two-man job, and you could not so easily have done this without me. And yet we have not negotiated additional compensation."
Oddly enough, Banks relaxed. "I've been wondering about that myself, been making me mighty suspicious. So what do ya want? Seeing as we've already established yer not interested in money."
"A favour would be excellent. Perhaps a free service to be rendered in the future?"
"Free service? I swear, rich people are the stingiest."
"Discounted, then. I'm not convinced now is the best time to be arguing minutae, I just thought I'd mention it."
They were interrupted by a sharp beep from Xu's tablet. He glanced down at the screen and swore softly. The good news was, his backdoors into this floor's cameras and the neural network monitoring the output were functioning as intended. The bad news...
"I'm afraid the Chief of Security is on his way," he informed Banks.
She let out a string of curses and hastened to secure the tiara in her bag, fastening the straps. "Inspector Gadget, here? Why?"
"Well, if I had to guess," Xu said dryly, annoyed at himself for not considering this possibility earlier, "I'd say he noticed his own security credentials being used to access this floor and became curious."
"Foc. Foc. A dhiabhail. Is he alone?"
"No. One more guard. They're on their way here, so they're not checking the adjoining rooms very thoroughly. We have less than a minute."
"Gotcha. How long on yer thingmajig?"
Xu checked the EMP pack's cooldown meter.
"...Another minute or so."
"Rats. Alright, we need to hide. And just so ya know it, I will shank you to death if ya turn on me now to save yer own skin."
"And you need my EMP pack to get back out past the lasers," Xu retorted. "So don't even think about using me as a distraction to get away."
Banks grinned sharply at him. "Sounds like we're on the same page. Now go."
He turned for the door to the room — Decker and his backup were still a few rooms out, and he had an idea of a few spots to hide in the adjacent areas.
He fully expected the Irish girl to be at his heels. But Banks, to his surprise, had instead dashed to the nearby bookcase and was now standing in front of it, peering intently at the titles.
"What are you doing?" he hissed.
"A little side job."
"Is this really the time?"
"Shut yer gob and let me work."
Xu heaved a tense sigh and tried to scout out the corridor. It was still empty. Trying to decide where to go from here, he glanced back in time to watch Banks tuck a large book into her trenchcoat. Then she appeared next to him, peering at the camera feed on his tablet.
"Handy," she said. "A'right. Ya take this spot, and I'll hide over here. We'll meet up by the lasers while those fools are inspecting the jewels."
It felt so very wrong to be heading towards the people bound to arrest them, knowing they would appear in the corridor any moment now, but he slipped forward as quietly as he could before ducking left into the room she had indicated, a barely-used kitchenette. He had no choice but to trust her, and had been uncertain in what she saw in this particular constellation of cover objects until he spotted the niche in the wall behind the sleek fridge, a blind spot that did not obviously stand out as such.
He could hear footsteps advancing outside. Heart in his throat, Xu hurried across the kitchenette and tucked himself into that little niche, the tall fridge between him and the door. He held his breath and, in a dizzy moment of foresight, pressed Mute on his tablet.
Two sets of footsteps stopped outside the door, and it hissed open. From the sound of it, one person was looking into the kitchenette, and the other into the opposite room. "Clear," said the more distant voice.
Xu's tablet vibrated, but it was silent. Even so, he stiffened.
"Clear," echoed the voice of Brian Decker, dangerously close. The man must have come deeper into the kitchen rather than stop at the threshold.
Close enough that Xu could hear him breathe - the ever-so-slight rattle of a habitual smoker. He steadfastly continued to hold his own breath.
Then the man turned around, and his footsteps — deceptively light — retreated. The door slid shut again. Just like that, it was over.
Xu exhaled shakily. He stood there for a moment, trying to will himself to unfreeze. They were already checking the next set of adjoining rooms, and after that they would reach the office and check on the tiara. And then, inevitably, they would double back. This was his window and he had to use it.
He pried himself off the wall and approached the door, peeking outside of it, to the right, in the direction of the office. Decker and his backup were still searching, but their attention was focused in front of them, not behind. Even so, they did occasionally look sideways. This was incredibly dangerous.
A shadow darted down the corridor to the left of him — it was Banks, leaving her hiding spot.
Xu swallowed. Not daring to look back, he followed her in a light step until they rounded a corner and were out of sight, then stopped to catch their breath.
She patted him on the shoulder and grinned.
"Don't faint on me now, doc," she whispered. "Laser's up ahead. Yer gadget back off cooldown yet?"
Xu checked his EMP pack and nodded in relief.
"Good. Ya got yer thingmajig with the data?"
Xu blinked, terror flooding him at the fact that he had come this close to leaving evidence behind. "Ah, no. One moment, please," he said, dashing into the side corridor leading to the server room. This would only take a moment.
He grabbed the flash drive, tucked it back into his arm compartment, then doubled back, already digging through his bag for his EMP pack when a harsh bark froze him in his tracks. His head shot up.
"I said, " came a gruff shout, echoing down the corridor that led to the laser grid, " Put your hands up!"
Belatedly, he remembered the second alert on his tablet. The one he'd muted.
He couldn't see the guard. He could only see Banks's wide-eyed face turned to the corridor, still as a willow. Slowly, she complied. The D.A.R.T. gun was dangling from her fingers.
"Okay, little miss, now put the gun down. I said put it down."
She didn't blink, didn't so much as glance anywhere else. She tossed the gun away from her, sideways, into the side corridor. It landed with a clatter, out of sight of the guard.
It landed squarely in front of Xu.
Oh, he thought, in a bit of a haze. A new understanding of the situation asserted itself.
He picked it up — bulky and unfamiliar in his hands — and began to inch forward.
"Security, I've got an intruder on level six," the guard was muttering into his radio now. Xu could see his shadow on the floor. He was moving towards Banks, as was Xu. Soon they would converge.
"It's a... girl," he said, with some hint of disbelief. "Uh, negative. I can take her in myself," he said a touch defensively.
Banks rolled her eyes but kept silent. Xu's finger found the trigger. He had never handled a gun before and couldn't tell if this one had a safety. He tried to figure out a way to hold it that felt natural - one-handed or two-handed? He remembered something about letting your breath out when you fired...
The guard kept moving forward. "Alright now. Get down on the floor, and nobody needs to get hurt."
Banks sank to her knees, unblinking.
Xu pressed himself to the wall.
"I said, down on the floor." The man was gesturing with his gun. His profile swam into view. Finally, Xu could see him. But that was very much mutual, if he so much as glanced sideways—
Xu swallowed, exhaled, and raised the gun in the general direction of the man's midsection. He pulled the trigger.
There was a thwip. The man staggered, grasping at his shoulder. He started to turn, but his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed like a sack of potatoes in front of Banks.
She climbed back to her feet and let out a little growl.
"That was mighty kind of you. Now let's get the hell out of here," she hissed, snatching the gun back from him.
Xu could only concur.