protocol_01.05: sneakernet
Of course, the machine they have to get to is pretty much in the middle of the building, and of course whoever is running security at Iwakura has at least heard the term "infosec". Which is why just strolling in like they belong there isn't going to work.
Not that it's a huge loss; this way is a lot more fun.
"You just wanted an excuse to rappel down the building while I couldn't talk you out of it." Elsa sounds amused enough that Anna's thinking either she's actually starting to recover from whatever, or she's getting a lot better at pretending.
"I can neither confirm nor deny." Anna tests the anchors and knots one last time while Adze gives her harness a final check. "How are the security cameras?"
"About to go on loop."
The initial plan was for Anna to scuttle down the side of the building, in a weird architectural groove that blocked line of sight on her from any cameras, until she got to the right floor. Now, though, Elsa has the electronic security under her control, so that just leaves the human part. And lets Anna avoid road rash.
Adze is already picking the lock on the roof entrance. He'll grab the ropes once Anna's in, and then go set up their escape route while being nearby in case there's trouble. His part in this got slightly modified now that Elsa's back, since he doesn't have to play lookout. He seems fine with it, though. Not much risking your neck for no pay, maybe.
Adze comes back, picks up the ropes, and hooks in as Anna steps to the edge. "On belay," he says over the comm.
Anna grins as she pulls on her gloves. She loves this part. "Let's go," she says before hopping off.
The descent is easy, rope streaming through her palms as she walks down the wall. Sure, she could fall, but timing's harder and, despite what Elsa might say, she's not actually an adrenalin-junkie. And since this entire op requires timing, controlled descent it is. She stops when she reaches the correct story, and lets herself hang in her harness for a moment as she takes a look at the window right off to the side.
Thankfully, the schematics were right and with a little work, she can pop the lock and slide in. Sure, she could have cut the glass, but right now, they're still hoping on stealth and a hole in the window is kinda damn obvious. But the building is just the kind of aesthetic that would boast corner offices having windows that actually open, even though they probably rarely, if ever, are, and Anna lands inside some manager's depressingly stereotypical office. Oh god, it even has a poster of a movie that came out five years ago on the wall, probably in some desperate attempt to either seem cool or add some splash of actual personality. She despairs a little as she unhooks the rope from her harness and gives a few tugs so Adze knows to pull it back up.
Anna gently closes the window and then swaps for a thinner pair of gloves before she steps out into the darkened hallway. "Where?"
"Your planned route is still clear. Take a left."
Her planned route takes her through a cubicle farm. Muscle-memory has her crouching down and picking her way quickly and carefully through the dividers, even though she knows Elsa's still spoofing the camera feed and will tell her if security breaks their routine. Better to be safe than sorry.
The room itself is rather depressing, darkened and empty as it is. There aren't even any windows to let the light from the street in. How can anyone work in this sort of boxed-in area, not even aware of what the weather is or the time of day? She'd go crazy.
Does her sister even have a window, wherever she is? Why she suddenly thinks about this, she has no idea. But the thought bothers her, eats at the back of her brain. It's a bad train of thought for an op. It's an even worse one when Elsa just got back online from...wherever she was. She wants to know, and that information is closer than ever. They're so close, she can feel it.
"Rime, you'd " she starts. You'd tell me if there was a problem with you, right?
"Hm?"
"I'm set up, Arc." Adze's voice interrupts. Right.
"Nevermind." She's at an intersection. "Which way?"
"Right, pass two hallways, left."
Elsa feeds directions into her ear as she makes her way through this maze of a building, dodging security. Finally, she reaches the door to the cluster room. It only takes Elsa a few seconds to spoof the prox card reader, and the door opens with a click. Anna presses on inside, closing the door behind her. The room is filled with computers, but she knows which one she wants. It's the one that's slightly apart from the others, unconnected.
"Okay, how do you want to do this?"
"Security hasn't spotted us yet. How many slots does this thing have?"
"Two that I can see easily."
"All right. Stick the data stick in. Then stick the corm in; I want to take a quick look at what's on here while we pull it down."
Anna does so. It's kinda neat how it doesn't even look like anything's going on with the computer on-screen, that whatever Elsa did is this subtle, but it still would be kinda nice to know that it was, you know, doing something. She has to stop herself from shuffling from foot to foot, restless. Elsa's attention is split, and while normally she wouldn't worry since her sister has done crazier multi-tasking in the past, she's never sounded so exhausted before.
"Shoot." Elsa sounds frustrated. "I'm pretty sure everything is here, but I just found a reference to a printed document. It's filed in hardcopy only. God save me from infosec, why did it have to be hardcopy? "
"So..."
"So I'm not sure, but we might need it," she growls. "Which means someone has to get it. I've got the number and location, but it's elsewhere in this building."
Anna swears under her breath. "How much longer will the data transfer take?"
"Too long to be safe for that and the file."
"Where is it?" Adze breaks in. Anna had almost forgotten he's on the line too.
"Filing room, 3 floors below you. Adze, are you —"
"I can get that, if you can keep security off my tail and tell me where to go."
"I...I can do that."
"Great."
Anna can't stop herself from bouncing on the balls of her feet as she listens to Elsa feed Adze directions. It's different from this side, just being able to listen and not do. She wonders if this is what her sister feels like all the time. She doesn't know how she stands it. Anna needs to move, to be the one acting, because she's really no good at sitting around while other people put their necks on the line. But now, she's stuck here babysitting a computer, and if it takes much longer, she's going to start climbing up the walls.
It really doesn't take that long, not when Anna actually looks at the time. Adze has the papers in hand and is on his way back to their meeting point in under five minutes. It just seemed to take forever.
At about the same time he's back, the light on the datastick flashes off. It's done. "Rime, it's done. We good?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we're done. Let's go." She sounds subdued as Anna grabs the stick and corm and stuffs both into her pocket. "Hallway's clear."
Elsa says nothing else but directions as Anna makes her way to a stairwell near an outer wall. Adze is there waiting, against the wall half a flight up so that he's not within line of sight of either door. "Ready to go?" he asks, walking down. He's got their rappelling gear in his hands.
"Yeah, let's get out of here."
"Sure thing." He ties the rope into a complicated knot around the railing and through some of gear, first for himself then for her. She tests it once, and on his thumbs-up, she jumps, rappelling down the shaft quickly, all the way down to the sub-basement. Adze follows as soon as she's out of his way. Once he's down, he removes a clip and tugs on the rope a certain way, and the entire thing comes unwound from the railing. No sense leaving behind evidence.
The blueprints of the building ended up being entirely accurate, and the maintenance shaft into the old abandoned tunnels is right where it should be. The cover only takes a few solid hits from Adze before it's off and he pulls it back after them as they disappear into the tunnels.
Easy, clean getaway. Anna's feeling pretty good about how it all turned out, everything considered. Much less of a furball than the last one.
"Well, this went better, didn't it?"
Adze chuckles. "Less people trying to kill us, for one thing. I'm a fan of that."
"Gotta agree with that one." The tunnels are pitch black, the only source of light being their headlamps. Their soft footsteps echo slightly off the crumbling, dry stone and metal. This used to be part of a subway system, before the skybridges and elevated trains replaced everything. You find pockets of these all throughout the city; these are in better condition than most. Might be because no one's living in them.
Anna wrings her hands a little. "Thanks again, you know, for your help. I don't know what we would have done without you."
"It wasn't a problem. You needed the help, and you two are pretty nice to work with, so...yeah."
"I'm sorry." It's the first thing Elsa's said in a while that isn't directions. It's soft enough that Anna barely catches it.
"Wait, what? What are you apologizing for, Rime?" Adze beats her to it, and sounding about as confused as she is to boot.
"I didn't think about hardcopies. I should have. They were already clever enough to not have the data networked. I should have thought about that sooner. It nearly wrecked your plan."
"Hey, hey, it's fine. The plan was simple in case something like that came up," Adze frowns a little. "Seriously, it was barely a plan. The only reason it looked like a plan is because you're here."
"...yeah, okay. I'm going to go check your exit point." Anna knows Elsa isn't done yet, but she's not about to call her out here in front of Adze.
"She always like that?" he asks, after a few minutes.
"Like what?" And okay, maybe she's a tad more defensive than she should be. The glitch put her on edge.
"Um. Driven. She's about as hard on herself as Doc is." He shakes his head. "How on earth she was supposed to know about those, I have no idea."
"Doc has something against Rime?" Anna zeroes in on that part of the statement.
Adze blinks. "No! Not from what I can tell. Doc likes Rime just fine. Better than a lot of people, actually. No, Doc's just also hard on herself. Like, stupidly so."
"Oh," she says, relaxing.
"And you're protective." He holds his hands up. "Not that that's a bad thing! It's just, well, it's rare to see that with blacksiders, even partners. Or anyone in the undercity, really." His face softens, just a little, tiny tufts of blond hair sticking out of his cap glowing in the light like a fractured halo. "It's really...it's nice to see."
It's all she can do to smile a bit at that. They continue on in easy silence.
"Your exit's clear."
It takes both of them to open up the rusted access cover up to the street, but they manage it. The car is still where Adze parked it, a few blocks over. Sven is waiting for them, tail wagging as he trots up next to Adze. "Everything okay here, buddy?" Adze asks, rubbing him behind the ears. Sven woofs quietly and wags his tail harder. "Good job."
The drive back is mostly peppered with easy conversation, about nothing in particular. Everyone avoids the personal questions. Stuff like the weather — it sucks — and local sports teams — also suck — are universal "safe" topics. Elsa's mostly silent the entire way, only interjecting when either of them ask her something directly. Adze hands her the hardcopy documents when he drops her off at Sanctuary, with a small smile and a "don't be a stranger" before he drives off, Sven barking his goodbyes from the backseat.
Anna pokes her head in the door to let T know she's still alive. It's the late-night rush at this point, blacksiders just coming off jobs means a full bar, so Anna just waves and flashes a thumbs up when she catches T's eye. The older woman rolls her eyes and makes a shooing motion before turning back to the impressively sloshed customer she's currently dealing with.
Anna shoos.
By the time she gets back to her place, the only thing she wants to do is collapse on the couch. She changes out of her working clothes and into something more comfortable before plugging the datastick into the computer and flopping back onto the couch.
"Thanks," Elsa says quietly.
"Seriously, stop. I told you, you're not actually perfect." Because watching her sister beat herself up over something she had zero control over is annoying at the best of times, which these are not. "There was no way you would have known."
"I just...I'm supposed to have these thing for you. I can't do anything else from here." Her voice sounds small, just completely wrung-out. Anna's frustration deflates a little.
"Elsa...you already do so damn much. I don't even know how you do it. Adze was right: the plan was barely a plan. God, it would have been so much harder without you." Anna pinches the bridge of her nose. "And that was after the glitch. Seriously, if you're so worried about it, take a break."
"Anna..."
"No, I'm serious Elsa. When was the last time you slept? You're always around when I need you, or when I just want to babble at you."
"It's fine."
Anna sits up, annoyance mixing with worry. "No, it's not fine. I know I panicked when you glitched, but T's right. You can't possibly be on all the time. And you came back sounding completely wrecked. You can't keep this up."
"Yes, I can."
"Is it because you're afraid I'll go crazy with worry again and go running off half-cocked? I promise I won't. I'll stay right here in this apartment if you just...take some time off-line. I promise."
"Anna, I can't."
"Elsa —"
"I just can't!"
The vehemence takes Anna by surprise. She recovers quickly though. If Elsa's going to be a goddamn moron about it, then fine. She tried. "Fine. I, at least, am going to sleep. Because I'm tired."
She hates this, she hates fighting with her sister, but she hates the idea that her sister doesn't trust her. All Elsa's been doing for the last three years is taking care of Anna as best she can. And now, when Anna tries to return the favor, she just totally shuts it down. Anna knows, knows that Elsa's probably at this very second neck-deep in the data they got, because her sister doesn't know when to goddamn stop. She's risking burnout, and the voice in the back of Anna's head, the one that's been listening to T and Doc, just keeps whispering louder. Is Elsa really a skiz? Is she so hopelessly addicted to the Net that she can't even log off voluntarily so she can sleep? Has Anna been enabling this for years, because she didn't think about all this, what it meant? First when Elsa was Frost and now when she's Rime?
She's been taking and taking for years, never questioning what Elsa was giving. How much of this is her own fault?
Elsa sighs in her ear as Anna curls up under the blanket a few minutes later. "Good night, Anna," she says softly.
The light from the holo-screen isn't as comforting this time.