"Hi! You're Aurum, right?"
The cheerful, peppy voice cut into my contemplation of the twisting metal tree installed as the lobby's centerpiece. I looked to see where it came from and was met with a girl who didn't look much older than me. She wasn't anything to write home about - dull blonde hair, muddy eyes, pale skin - but her grin was bright and open.
"That's me," I replied.
"I'm Cassie Jones. I'm, like, the guide around here. Anyway, Mr. Schafer sent me to bring you up to the cy-sec. Sorry for the wait."
"It's no trouble," I assured her, standing up and slipping my laptop into the briefcase that I'd remembered to bring this time. "I got here early."
"Cool. The, uh, elevator's this way."
I followed the cheery girl and gave way for a gaggle of besuited men and women to get out before climbing into the mirrored elevator. Whispers and turned heads followed before they were cut off by the doors. Soft music began to play as the blonde-haired girl pressed the '8' button. The mirrored walls of the elevator reflected my mask to infinity.
"Cy-sec's on the eighth floor. They're really looking forward to meeting you. It's not often we get capes around, after all."
"I guess so," I replied, feeling a little awkward. I cast around for something to say. "Have you been working here long?"
"Not very long. Only, like, half a year? Thereabouts. I'm still basically the gofer. Mr. Schafer's, like, my… unofficial uncle, and he's pretty cool, but it's not like he can just punt me up to the corner office. So I'm the go-fetch girl."
"And I'm the fetchee?" I raised an eyebrow under the mask.
She blushed a little. "I guess so," she echoed. She paused, then asked, "What's it like being a rogue?"
I chewed my lip, debating whether to actually answer or brush it off. She seems friendly, after all. But…
In the end, I just shrugged. "What's it like not being a rogue? I don't really have much to compare it to."
"But, you didn't always have powers, right? I know capes go through some bad sh- stuff to get their powers, but after that, stuff must have gotten better, right?"
I thought back to how I had been before the cave, before my powers. I'd been Emma, Sophia and Madison's punching-bag, a living stress ball. My grades had been in the gutter and my spirits worse. Afterwards, I'd been able to escape from them, repair my relationship with my dad and even start my own - very profitable - business. I was even thinking about looking into taking my high school exams early, because I knew I could ace them. All that really held me back at this point was not wanting to show too unreasonable a difference, potentially risking my identity. The cave had been miserable, but for what I'd gained I'd suffer that isolation a hundred times over.
"Yeah," I replied, a smile blooming under my mask. "It did."
Cassie looked a little surprised at what I said, but before she could say anything the elevator dinged and the doors swooshed open. The room beyond was lit by ceiling-to-floor windows and was split up by a labyrinth of chest-high cubicles. Men and women looked up at us. I still hadn't gotten used to the looks and the stares.
The blonde-haired girl ignored them and led me down the central corridor and around a corner out of the cubicle farm and past a set of doors marked out as meeting rooms and offices, eventually stopping in front of one with 'D. Schafer' written on it in neat, embossed letters. She knocked twice, then opened the door.
"Aurum to see you, sir."
The office reminded me a little of the deputy director's at the PRT, but it was bigger and much fancier-looking, more like part of a swanky apartment than a place of business. It was spartan, but in a fashionable way rather than due to regulations or budget. Everything was glossy black, spotless white or rich, gleaming wood.
The head of computer systems was practically a poster child of the Empire's ideal man. Handsome face, white, blond hair, blue eyes and somewhere in his mid-twenties. He smiled warmly, and just like the deputy director I couldn't see any fakeness in it.
"It's good to meet you," he said, standing up and walking around the desk to shake my hand. His voice sounded like it belonged on TV as a narrator or a presenter. "I'm Dominick Schafer, head of computing and information technology, as you know from my email. Good to meet you."
"Good to meet you too," I replied, taking the offered hand. His grip was firm.
"I have the hard copy of the contract you sent with your reply here," he said, returning to the desk and picking up a neat plastic sleeve. "I've signed my parts. If you sign yours then we can get down to business."
I took the papers and scanned through them, just in case. I'd gone out of my way to make sure my contract was as simple and loophole-free as it could be, and Medhall had a pretty good reputation, but I was the daughter of a union rep. I had a healthy scepticism of the benevolence of big business. I'd made sure to include an easy get-out clause for myself, so I could terminate the contract when I wanted, just in case. Everything looked to be how it ought to be, though, and I scrawled my cape name on the dotted line of both copies in the sleeve. I kept one and handed the other back to the blond-haired man, who placed it carefully on his desk.
"Wonderful. Now, if you'll follow me, we can meet the team I'd like you to work with."
"Sure," I replied. The tall man swept out of the office and turned into the second meeting room on the right. He opened the door then stepped inside, holding it open. Beyond was a long table, around which were seated four people; three men and a woman.
"Aurum, I would like you to meet Jenny Carlsen, Michael Kramer, Alexander Smith and James Sanders. Team, this is Aurum, a cape with enhanced programming abilities and the power to enhance computers' functionality.
A small chorus of 'Hellos' and 'His' ensued which I returned, feeling a little awkward. Eventually, I ended up sat halfway down one side of the table with Cassie next to me and the rest of the team opposite. Mr. Schafer had settled into a seat at the end of the table. All of us had a laptop out in front of us, barring Cassie and the department head, although theirs looked much fancier than mine.
"To begin, Aurum, could you please demonstrate your power? I presume that you can affect all of our devices, seeing as you've done so for a number of businesses simultaneously."
"Yes, I can," I said. I raised my hands, palm-up, and let a cloud of the glow float up into the air. I could make out the intakes of breath as I split the cloud into five and sent the portions drifting off over the able to merge with the laptops. I closed my eyes against the initial rush of information, carefully keeping out of any of the files. There was a clause in the contract about the privacy of their data, and I wanted no reason for them to not give me my good recommendation.
"This is incredible," someone said, prompting me to open my eyes again. I felt the tingle of a program opening. A performance monitor. The woman, Jenny, continued "According to this… I could run the whole corporation's data traffic through this and have memory and capacity to spare."
Mr. Schafer glanced at me. "You only charge $50 per hour for this? You undervalue yourself, Aurum. Not that I'm complaining." He smiled jokingly.
"Pretty damn perfect, too," commented one of the men. Michael, I thought. "We were planning to run a systemwide diagnostic next week," he elaborated, "It usually takes about a day and it slows up everything else. We were hoping that your power would help speed it up, and if these numbers are right, we can probably get the diagnostic over with in minutes, if that."
"Kind of self-defeating, really," piped up another of the men, the auburn-haired, glasses-wearing James Sanders. "Charging by the hour for something that speeds people's work up that much."
"Getting back to the point at hand," Mr. Schafer interrupted, "You should have an email with a link in it that we sent this morning."
"I've got it."
"Good. The link is to the shared platform that the team is going to be using to test the system - a mock-hack, if you will. What I'd like you to do is to go to that platform and essentially point out any flaws, weaknesses or anything else you notice that could give them an advantage. The more you find, the better our security will be."
I blinked. That wasn't exactly what I'd been expecting.
"Okay? If you're sure."
"Don't worry, white-hat hackers do this kind of thing all the time," said Jenny. "We employ them on a regular basis. The idea with having you help is that although we know the system well, there might be something only a tinker would pick up on."
I opened my inbox and clicked the link. The webpage on the other end looked almost like a video messenger, only it had a coding box in the background.
Michael cracked his knuckles. "Alright, here we go."
The next hour and a half was spent probing the borders of Medhall's firewalls. I didn't really have a great deal to do. The defenses were good, and there were even a few tricks I made notes of for my own programming. I could have brute-forced the passwords with my enhanced computer, but they really were excellent. It would probably have taken me weeks to do so unless I bought a whole bunch of computers, daisy-chained them together and then enhanced them all together.
About half an hour into the session, Cassie struck up a bit of a conversation and we got to chatting quietly. I kept one eye on the task at hand, but it was hard not to get sucked into the conversation. It made me uncomfortably aware of how long it had been since I'd had a civil, friendly conversation with someone about my own age. It turned out that we were both into novels and we shared a long conversation on them.
I had preferred fantasy, but after the cave I'd gotten into sci-fi, particularly the older stuff written before tinkers started to show up. I liked to look at the stuff they talked about in the book and see if I could think of any way to do it myself. Cassie, though, was a diehard fan of fantasy, and after I mentioned Lord of the Rings it took a glare from Mr. Schafer to get her to wind down from her rant on the fandom's opinions on Saruman. From there we meandered into a discussion of the merits of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light versus The Chronicles of Amber and thence to a general back-and-forth on the nature of sci-fi, fantasy and what the two had in common. I made scattered comments throughout to the team on the security measures, but I really didn't have much to say. Finally, Mr. Schafer called the thing to an end.
"Alright, that's it for now. Thank you for coming, Aurum. I'll send the second half of your payment over right away."
"Thanks," I replied. I looked over at the team. "Um, I'm going to have to retract my power. It shouldn't do anything bad, but I'd save what you're doing if I were you."
There was a flurry of clicking keyboards as I folded up my own laptop and replaced it in the briefcase. Once all of the staff had indicated that they were done, I called the glow back to me. The connections winked out and I felt the tingly sensation of my power returning to me.
"Alright, that's it."
"It was great working with you," said Jenny, smiling. "How much did you say that boost was per hour? Do you sell to individuals, or only to companies?"
"Both," I replied. I remembered the business cards Dad had printed out for me that I had been keeping in my breast pocket. "Here's my card." I plucked one out and slid it over the table with a flourish, feeling at once very stylish and incredibly dorky.
"Thanks," she said.
"You're welcome." I glanced at the clock on my HUD. I was a little later than I'd meant to be. Knowing Dad, unless I went now he'd start worrying himself to death. "OK, I've got to go. It was good working with you too."
"I'll see you down to the lobby," said Cassie, following as I started out of the door.
"If you want to," I said, kind of pleased. We walked over to the elevator and, after a short wait, climbed in. I pressed the 'G' button and the doors slid closed.
"Hey, do you mind if I have a couple of those cards?"
"Sure," I said, handing a pair to her. "If you want." I was a little confused as to why she wanted two, but that was quickly revealed as she plucked a pen out of her breast pocket and scribbled down a number on the back of one of the cards before handing it back to me.
"That's my number. Call if you want to, you know, meet up sometime. In-costume or not. You're cool to talk to."
I was a little taken aback. "OK," I said. I tucked the card into my trouser pocket. I didn't know whether or not I'd call it, but the warm feeling in my chest made me want to.