Chapter #25Backdoors by: imaj   I’d rather play it safe, you type out. Protean is locked up tight. It’s going to be hard enough for me to do as you ask without having to look after Hal as well.
I can bloody well look after myself, types Hal without pause.
I know you can son, types Charles. He’s sitting with Hal, so this must be as much for your benefit as Hal’s. Infiltration is Siobhan’s speciality. If she says it’s too risky, she knows what she’s talking about. Maybe she could deploy something for you.
There is a pause again as Hal and Charles converse on the other end. After a few seconds Hal continues. I could give you a flash drive that’ll open a backdoor into an isolated network.
It isn’t going to set of any alarms, you ask.
I’ll make it as quiet as I can. You’ll need to leave the flash drive in the computer though, he adds as an afterthought. Make sure you hide it.
You roll your eyes. I’ll pick it up tomorrow. You close the laptop before Hal can reply and return to bed.
You take a second to look at Marie Guerin. She slumbers peacefully there, still under the effects of your knockout sigil. The mask of Jon Straussler sits on the bed beside her where you left it. It is simple enough to take it and place it on her face. Instantly, she is replaced by a fake Jon. You let Monique’s personality take over as you snuggle in beside him, banishing any thoughts about Jon’s authenticity.
It lingers though, in a little corner of your mind: Two impostors playing at lovers. Each one only playing a part and pretending to love the other.
*****
You rap on the door of tiny flat the Stellae are basing out of three times and wait. It opens a crack and you see a suspicious looking Frank peeking out.
“Yes,” says Frank tetchily.
He doesn’t recognise you, but then you’ve switched out of being Monique and pulled out one of your old bedroom faces. Monique’s clothes feel too tight on the body of Arabella Idoni, but being Arabella has the advantage of not being recognised by anyone in Saratoga Falls.
“It’s me,” you tell him. “Siobhan.” You take a quick look round the landing. There’s nobody else here so you wave your hand across your face and return to being Monique. “Can I come in?”
There is the sound of a chain being unlatched and the door opens. “Come in,” says Frank, barely any more warmly. You step over the threshold and take a look around. “Dad and Hal have gone out,” he explains disinterestedly as he closes the door
“Hal left something for me,” you ask.
“Yeah,” answers Frank. “Several somethings.” He vanishes into a side room for a minute and returns to hand you four tiny flash drives.
You drop all but one of them into Monique’s clutch purse. The last you flip over between your fingertips. It really is tiny, just big enough to plug into the port on a computer. There’s some smart sigilwork etched onto the surface. It’s way beyond your ken, but exactly the sort of work that Kenandandrans like Hal are good at.
“At least they’ll be hard to spot,” you say, dropping the last one in beside the rest. Frank shrugs, leaving you feeling awkward. “Thanks,” you say to him weakly. “I guess I’ll be going.”
*****
You make your move at lunchtime, sauntering out of Monique’s corner office as she would normally. Kate looks up as you walk by, but you blank her, ignoring the pointed look she gives you. When you reach the elevator, you hit the button for the top floor and wait. It rides up to the top of the building without interruption. Your cloak, your mystical ability to blind the senses of others, leaps to your fingertips as you summon it. You’ll need it up here – Monique does not have access to the laboratories.
You move carefully to the doors as they open, looking round them just enough to cast your cloak over the two security guards waiting outside. With them blinded, you walk confidently out of the lift and approach the checkpoint.
The top floor of Protean Industries houses the most secret projects and security is tight. The two guards cannot see you, but a camera tracks your movement and a security scanner bars the way between you and the laboratories. You can’t do anything about the camera, and once the footage is reviewed it might cause problems for the real Monique. You suppose that Protean will be shut down by that point, though it bothers you to leave a footprint of your passing in your time as Monique.
The scanner presents an interesting problem, because it seems that Fane have augmented it with some form of enchantment. A purely technological scanner would be impossible for you to fool directly, but this one? You have a sneaking suspicion that your cloak will work just as a well on it too. It does feel a little odd to your senses as you fold your cloak over it, but it seems to work. The scanner makes no complaint as you pass. You wave Monique’s ID to the guards as you walk through the checkpoint. Since the guards can’t see you, it’s more for the benefits of whoever is watching on the security cameras.
Eldibria alerts you instantly that you have come to the right place. To your normal senses the corridor you have entered is clinically clean, decked out in off-whites and frosted glass, with laboratory numbers stencilled onto the walls in minimalistic fonts. But through Eldibria you see something else entirely. The walls pulse organically with undulating masses of purple-black tissue. It stinks of murder and death. You have to cover your mouth avoid emptying the contents of your stomach.
No one seems to be about as you reach the first lab, number seventeen. The door is protected by a swipe card lock, but you came prepared. You pocketed Jon’s swipecard while he was asleep last night. He is out of the office today anyway, meeting his father again, and should not notice its absence.
The lock clicks and your slide the door open. Only a couple of scientists are inside, poking away at computers. Both fall within your cloak instantly. The lab is odd, for most of its space seems to be taken up as a mortuary. Your breath fogs in the cold air as you look at the row upon row of square shaped doors that must surely contain cadavers. The oddest thing though, is the large clockwork mechanism in the centre of the room.
Is that what was taken from the lab at Keyserling? It seems to be the right size. This is the lab of Project Kardios, which makes a twisted kind of sense as you had already found out that the project relates to necromancy. One last memory falls into place: Fyodor told you that he head of the Necromancers that hid in Germany during the Second World War was called Julius Keyserling. There must be a link there.
Unable to contain your curiosity you walk over to one of the morgue drawers and slide it open. Inside you find the pallid flesh of a dead man, gone almost white. Grey, lifeless, eyes stare straight up and a savage wound at his neck is encrusted in long since dried blood. You recoil in horror as your gaze strays to his chest. A metal object protrudes from where his heart should be.
You’ve seen one of these creatures before, when you apprenticed with Miko. Its clockwork heart is silent though, and the monster does not move. You slide the drawer shut, in some ways thankful that you did not find all of this in the lab at Keyserling College.
You have no desire to linger here any longer than you have to. Retrieving one of Hal’s devices from your purse, you walk over to an unoccupied computer. It only takes a few seconds to reach round the back and plug it in. The computer show no indication that you’ve done anything.
Before you leave the lab you take one look back at the two scientists here. It would be simple to tap one on the back of his head and steal his memories, but you have no desire to remember what has happened here. Even just thinking about it agitates the imago of Grandma Shabbleman that squats at the back of your mind. Let Hal find it out on the computers, you reason.
With that thought on your mind you step out of the lab and straight into a researcher. You curse your foolishness in not checking what was outside first. The scientist has seen you now and that means it is too late to throw your cloak over her.
It takes you a few seconds to recognise her. It’s Dr Jillian Harding, the project lead for Project Asterion. She’s a little taller than you, with a slight plumpness that lends her the air of being more cute than beautiful. Little crow’s feet round her eyes suggest that she’s a bit older than you too. She stares at you thoughtfully through severe looking rectangular glasses.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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