Chapter 28: Breaking and Entering
A little after midnight, three Turks wearing black clothes, black gloves, black knit caps, and with blackened faces lurked near the back access door of the tall, ugly gray office building that housed The Midgar Mirror.
Light shone through the lower windows. Reno had expected them to be at least a little shadowy, but they were almost as bright as during business hours. He saw movement in one of them. "Be careful. The lights are on and someone's walking around inside," he said unnecessarily, pulling down his cap to make sure it covered his all-too-noticeable red hair.
Rude touched his sunglasses—how could he see in the dark in those things?—and said, "That'll be the cleaning crew. Our briefing notes say they work the night shift. Keeps them from being underfoot when the tabloid staff is producing their noxious fiction."
"That's why we're loaded for bear," Cissnei piped up. She patted the black satchel full of materia and materia-powered magitech that she wore with a cross-body strap. "We can put 'em all to sleep and have the run of the place without interference. Since the janitors have to go all over the building, the internal alarms will already be off."
Of course, Reno thought. Veld and Tseng had planned the mission around the janitors' work schedule and the security rounds. "We still need the internal cameras and surveillance overridden, though."
"They'll get their turn in the right order." Cissnei flashed a wide grin at him, her white teeth an unmistakable target in the streetlights. "Unlike you, I paid attention during the mission briefing."
"Close your mouth," Reno snapped at her in irritation. "Those teeth of yours'll give us away, yo."
"Whatever. No one's looking for us, and all the exterior cameras are already under control."
"Better safe than sorry. Cyberweapons might have missed a circuit. Besides, you never know when a security guard might actually be doing his job instead of napping."
"Yeah, yeah." She got on her phone to the Cyberweapons team supporting their late night excursion. "We're just outside now," she said to whoever was on the other end. "Do your thing." She listened for a moment, said "Great," and disconnected the call. "Internal building surveillance is overridden and under Cyberweapons' complete control. We are officially invisible to electronic detection."
Her gloved hand pulled from her satchel an electro-magical gadget shaped like a rectangular box and covered with lights and buttons. She placed it on the side of the door and activated it. The lights flickered in the darkness then blinked dim green. There was a soft click. "Door is unlocked," she announced quietly.
"Still can't believe Cyberweapons found a way into the camera and alarm systems. Wonder what moron set that up? Dumbasses," said Rude.
"Their techs probably wanted to be able to work on it remotely and forgot to close the backdoor."
"Or they left it open so they'd be able to get in whenever they wanted. It's still dumb. It's the security and alarm system, for Gaia's sake. It shouldn't be connected to the public networks at all, even through a firewall." Rude sounded so offended that Cissnei giggled.
Reno said, "Pity Cyberweapons couldn't do all this hacking for us before we got here. Would've made getting in so much quicker."
"Suppose a janitor or one of your abnormally alert security guards noticed the building systems were misbehaving?"
"Details." Reno slung his mag rod over his shoulder, and slipped through the door that Cissnei obligingly kept open for him and Rude. It hissed shut behind them.
Just inside, Rude activated his Libra materia and performed a scan. "No enemy stats. This floor is clear. No wandering night watchmen."
The interior in the back of the building wasn't high end. It was rather dismal, with flat, synthetic carpet in a muddy brownish-gray color. The walls had been painted industrial-bland off-white, and the place smelled faintly of plastic and dust. Before them stretched a long hallway lined with doors.
They silently moved through the first floor. The utilitarian surroundings gave way to cleaner, brighter, and lighter décor and a series of small, private offices. After a bit of exploring, they found a fancy office with two workstations, one sitting kitty-corner atop the regular desk, the other in a cramped computer hutch against the wall. The office space clearly belonged to someone more important than the lower level workers, as the size and furnishings were much nicer than everything else they'd seen thus far. A framed poster showcasing The Midgar Mirror's logo loomed large on one wall. Behind the desk hung a couple of company awards in nicer frames. There was even an oversized silk fern in the corner that looked quite realistic.
Cissnei bent over the computer on the desk. "It's the main workstation for the security chief." She tapped the brass and fake wood placard sitting at the front of the desk. "This one has an external connection through the company firewalls, but no intra-network access. Looks like it's just for email and office stuff."
She went to the other workstation at the computer hutch. "This is it. Perfect, but...huh. I guess the alarm and surveillance systems must be on another server, 'cause they're not here."
"There's probably a monitor room somewhere," said Rude. "The alarms and cameras might be on a dedicated system. It'll be protected somewhere else."
"Yeah, probably. Looks like this one's solely for accessing high-level supervisory stuff on the building's private intranet," she said as she pulled out another electro-magical gadget. "No external access."
Despite Rude's earlier Libra stats, Reno looked around, half expecting someone to stumble upon them regardless of all their precautions. He repressed his desire to fidget. "Can the chatter and get finished already. Don't wanna tempt fate, yo."
"Just a sec. This toy is a little fancier than the other one." Cissnei activated the device and placed it on the computer. "Aaaand, there we go, I'm in. I love the Cyberweapons Department."
"They do build good tools," Rude commented.
Reno snorted. "Now we just have to find the master copy of that fucking picture." IT and Cyberweapons had managed to break through the firewalls to the externally connected servers and even located the original email with the centerfold image on that hack reporter's computer. At this very moment, they were working overtime to crack the encryption and trace it back to the sender. Anonymizers meant nothing to them beyond a little extra work. With only a few minor exceptions, Shinra owned the networks on the Planet.
Maybe, he thought, they'd be able to re-acquire that stupid magazine once they discovered who had sent that nastygram to The Midgar Mirror. One could hope, but their luck hadn't been great so far when it came to their current clusterfuck of an assignment. The content of that email had seemed to indicate that the sender bore a grudge against Hewley. Wouldn't someone as angry as that have sent the magazine itself to the Mirror to give them incontestable evidence? Or was their miscreant planning further email-bombs?
"Let me bring up a directory," Cissnei said, her fingers flying over the keyboard. "The main office is on Level Fifteen. That's where the editor-in-chief works. There might be a private server there. Oh, IT is on Level Eight. And Digital Forensics is on Level Twenty-One. Both of those are good candidates, too. Thank Shiva this place isn't as big as Shinra HQ, or we'd be searching every night for a week."
"Yeah, but servers can be anywhere," Reno grumbled, "so we'll probably be searching all night, anyway."
"Can you find any dedicated server rooms?" Rude suggested. "Those other departments probably won't be the physical locations of the main servers. They'll probably be in special, air conditioned locations."
"Okay, but if it's a private server that's not connected to any internets or intranets, it'll probably be someplace easily accessible, at least for the main office or IT." Cissnei activated something on her hacking gadget and again inspected the computer. "Ah, yes, the only server room is on Level Fourteen."
"The boss would want to keep track of their gold-plated master evidence," Reno said. "I'll bet the master copy is in the chief editor's office."
"We need to find the master image and the one they used for forensics testing," said Rude. "Orders say we have to grab copies of both."
Yeah, Reno thought, they needed both so Shinra's IT people could verify that the two departments had been working from the same image. It seemed like a no-brainer, but the tabloid had already made one mistake. Maybe they'd made others, too. "All right, Digital Forensics is our first stop, then the main office," he said. "Let's get moving."
As they had control over the building security, they first checked the cameras to determine that Level Twenty-One was unoccupied. In fact, the floor was dark. No one had turned on any lights. Reno wondered aloud if that meant the cleaning staff had already been there, or if they just hadn't gotten to it yet. No one had an answer.
They took the elevator as none of them wanted to climb that many stairs. The elevator doors opened to a brightly lit floor and another poster of The Midgar Mirror's logo on the opposite wall, accompanied by a banner proclaiming "Safety Is Our Number One Concern!" in garish colors. The lights were an unpleasant surprise.
"Damn," said Rude. "The cleaners must've arrived right before we did." He quickly cast a Libra scan again. "Damn," he repeated as he took in the results of his spell. "Got some ridiculously low stats for three people."
"Better equip your Seal and get ready to cast Sleepel," said Reno. "Let's find the janitors and put them out of action so we can search in peace."
"Already equipped." Rude pushed up his sleeve and flashed his bangle. Two materia orbs glimmered in the slots.
"Hide that before someone sees the glow," Reno hissed.
Rude pulled his sleeve back down over the offending bangle.
"Quiet," said Cissnei. "Listen."
Not far off, they heard some low voices chatting and laughing, then a loud roaring noise fired up.
"Vacuum," said Rude. "They'll probably split up to cover the floor."
The three Turks crept around the cubicles and first found the restrooms, where one scowling cleaner was dealing with toilets. Rude hit her with his Sleepel spell and she collapsed into unconsciousness, her long ponytail dragging through the toilet bowl water.
"Oh, harsh," said Cissnei. "So disgusting." She actually moved the woman out of the stall and went so far as to blot her hair with a paper towel.
"She deals with disgusting stuff as part of her job," Reno sneered. "I'm sure it's no big deal to her."
"I bet she's never fallen asleep in a toilet bowl before," Cissnei retorted.
"Whatever."
They located another cleaner in a cube farm emptying waste baskets into a large pushcart. That man also was sent to dreamland. At least he fell to the industrial carpet and stayed relatively clean.
"Two down," said Rude.
The woman running the vacuum had made it into a conference room. She never even noticed the Turks who entered behind her, and snored softly as Rude shut off her vacuum and lifted her into a chair.
"What happens if they compare notes and realize they all fell asleep?" asked Cissnei. "Do you think they'll report it?"
"Not a chance," said Reno mockingly. "Would you report sleeping on the job? They're probably scared to death of getting fired."
Rude frowned. "That's true. They probably live in some hole under the plate. I wouldn't be surprised if this rotten job is the best they can do. They won't risk losing it."
Cissnei shrugged.
Free from the threat of discovery by random janitors, they split up to search the floor. Reno located an office labeled "Hayato Antonov, Digital Forensics Manager" and cheerfully searched the man's desk, expertly picking drawer locks. In the top drawer he found a thumb drive with a convenient tag bearing the handwritten legend: "Hewley Centerfold."
"Pay dirt," said Reno with a smirk. He flipped open his PHS and called the others.
Rude had been working his way through the cubes and reported that he'd found nothing of interest. Cissnei reported she'd found the forensics computer lab and had located the centerfold on one of the dedicated servers there. "I'm making a copy now," she said.
"Yeah, I'll get a copy of mine as soon as I hang up," said Reno. "Everyone, meet up with me here." He plugged the drive into his PHS and let Cyberweapons' special program do its job. Its sophisticated magitech software would cover its tracks as it worked, cleaning any access logs and resetting the timestamps on the files to indicate that nothing had been touched at all.
Rude arrived at Antonov's office as Reno finished copying the contents of the thumb drive to his PHS.
Reno carefully replaced the drive into the top drawer and relocked it. He surveyed the office, verifying that nothing was out of place. Cissnei showed up a few minutes later. They all exchanged smug smiles.
"On to the main office," said Cissnei.
They didn't bother searching any of the desks, heading instead straight for the editor-in-chief's office where they identified a high-end wall safe with a mako-powered digital lock. Reno and Rude made quick work of breaking into it using some lock tech from Cyberweapons.
To Reno's disappointment, they did not find the porn magazine in the safe. They did find an unlabeled thumb drive. Reno inserted it into the port on his PHS and ran his software to break the encryption. A fast but thorough examination of the drive's contents showed the centerfold on it. He made a copy and returned the thumb drive to its original home in exactly the same location and position as he'd found it. Rude closed the safe door and flashed his eyebrows at his partner.
They also found in the corner behind the editor's desk a small server with its own, dedicated keyboard and monitor.
"Well, well, well, what have we here?" said Reno with a satisfied smirk.
"It looks like a very private server," Cissnei added. "Just perfect for protecting confidential data."
"Bet it's not connected to any networks at all. It's all alone in the world," said Reno.
"We'll have to hack in and give it some company for a few minutes," said Cissnei with a grin. "I have just the tech it needs, poor lonely little thing." With that, she placed another electro-magical goodie against the server and activated it. This piece of equipment flashed a green light, and the server's monitor lit up with data. Cissnei leaned in close.
"Lots of stuff here," she commented. "Including the centerfold, the original tabloid article, and even some ideas for follow-up stories. Some look half complete and the proposed headlines...they're kind of crazy, really." She made a disgusted face. "This isn't funny anymore. Veld's really not going to like this."
"Grab everything on the server," said Reno. "We can let IT sort it out after we get back."
Cissnei nodded and pressed a few buttons on her device. It rhythmically flashed a yellow light as it copied the data. "This might take a while," she muttered. "There's a ton more data here, most of it unrelated to anything we care about."
"I wonder if the Mirror has managed to collect confidential information that we've missed?" Rude mused. He exchanged an amused look with Reno. "We just might care about more of this data than that centerfold bullshit."
"It's a pity we can't plant any bugs or remote access devices," Reno said, tapping his mag rod against his hand impatiently.
"We're blown if anyone finds anything out of order," Rude said. He scratched at some of the black grease paint on his cheek. "I bet these people are super paranoid with their bread and butter. They probably check on their computers every day. They don't have an onsite IT department of their own for nothing. That's expensive so it must be worth their while. Most operations this size would outsource or bring in contractors."
"They're probably worried about corporate espionage," Cissnei muttered, checking on the download speed. "Other tabloids hacking in and stealing their scores. They probably sweep for bugs and spyware regularly."
Rude huffed a small laugh. "Yeah. Bet they didn't expect Turks as their corporate spies, though."
"Probably," Reno conceded, "but I'd still love to bug this place. Our bugs and spyware are so much better than anyone else's. Imagine what we'd find."
"A while" turned out to be almost half an hour. When the data copy application finished, Cissnei shut everything down. Like the copy functions on their PHSs, the software on her device took care of falsifying access logs and altering the timestamps to show the files as undisturbed.
Observing the process, Reno agreed with Cissnei's earlier assessment that the Cyberweapons Department was a terrific ally.
"Mission accomplished, yo. Let's get out of here before some security guard doing rounds shows up," he said. "Assuming they aren't just sitting on their dumb asses in someone's office and playing games on their phones."
"What about the janitors?" Cissnei asked.
Rude checked the time. "The spell should last for another hour or so, unless something disturbs them and wakes them sooner."
Reno said cynically, "I bet they'll wake up feeling better than they've felt in a long time. Like a million gil. Though that won't last when they realize they'll have to work at double or triple speed just to get finished cleaning tonight." He laughed maliciously.
"You're mean," said Cissnei, crossing her arms.
"Who cares? We got what we came for. Let's just go already."
The Turks returned to the first floor and slipped out, making sure to cover all their traces. Once they were out of camera range, another quick call to the Cyberweapons people coordinating with them got all the systems re-enabled and everything locked up nice and tight.
No one would ever know that anything had ever been tampered with.
Turks always succeeded in their missions. Even stupid ones like this, Reno thought with pride as he and his teammates sneaked away under the cover of darkness. Let the world beware!
Not even the stray cat hunting rats in an alley noticed them as they skulked to their waiting transport.
Pedantic Note: I don't believe you can use Libra/Sense the way I'm describing in this story in any of the games. The game mechanics restrict materia use to particular situations, but in a more open environment that is not limited to strict gameplay rules, it seems reasonable that you could try to use spells anytime you wanted and get results with varying degrees of usefulness (including none).
Next Time: Veld and Tseng assault an investment banker.