Immune (39 page)

With a slight shift of his thoughts, Raul brought up a three-dimensional diagram of the ship’s systems, coloring the various pieces with a color scheme displaying relative status. Spinning in his mind, it looked like a bloody mess, the display showing only occasional specks of healthier yellow and green colors. Although the overall status was disheartening, he now knew where to focus his efforts for the fastest payback.

Raul glanced up at one of the cameras Dr. Stephenson had installed to monitor his progress, a slow grin spreading across his face. It wouldn’t be long now until he showed the deputy director who was going to be using who.

The lights of Las Vegas lit the low clouds in a neon color storm that was like nothing Jennifer had ever seen. Across the street, Celine Dion’s wonderful voice activated the fountains of the Bellagio, pulling Jennifer toward it, along with a horde of tourists. As she listened, she found herself unable to suppress a smile. “A New Day.” How appropriate.

Strolling past the mass of spectators crowding forward to get a better view of the dancing fountains, Jennifer made her way into the luxurious lobby. Ignoring the long line at check in, she made her way directly to one of the young women currently assisting another customer.

Spotting Jennifer standing behind the couple and their two small children, the woman glanced up.

“I’m sorry, but if you’re not with Mr. and Mrs. Alfonse, you’ll have to wait in line like everyone else.”

Jennifer ignored her.

“Excuse me, but my mom and dad are in the casino somewhere and I left my key in our room. You’ll find the reservation under Wilkinson. Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Wilkinson. I’m their daughter Gale.”

As the woman’s eyes locked with Jennifer’s, they softened, a sympathetic look spreading across her face.

Turning back to the couple in front of her, the hotel clerk held up one finger. “I’m sorry. Give me just a second to help this young lady get back into her room.”

In less than a minute Jennifer found herself in the elevator, key in hand, making her way up to her twenty-ninth floor, then to her mythical parents’ room, one of the penthouse suites occupying the top seven floors. As she opened the door, Jennifer paused, gasping in delight. A powder room was located just off the marble entry. Overlooking the living area, the wet bar fronted the credenza on the back wall.

Throwing her arms wide, Jennifer turned into the bedroom, then stopped to gaze at the spectacular view offered by the floor-to-ceiling windows. Continuing her tour, she moved to the “Her” bathroom, her eyes taking in the large whirlpool tub, vanity, illuminated makeup mirror, separate water closet with toilet and bidet. After that, the “His” bathroom, with shower, bench, and steam jets was a bit of a letdown.

Jennifer giggled to herself. “He” would just have to suck it down while she enjoyed all the luxury the suite had to offer.

The fake identities and reservations for her make-believe family had been trivial, even the credit cards, social security numbers, and Cayman Island bank accounts. It was truly amazing what someone who knew how to manipulate the world’s computing systems could do, when she put her mind to it.

Laying her backpack on the desk, she pulled out the laptop, the power cord dragging the two alien headsets out with it. For some reason the sight of the translucent headbands sent a chill flowing up her spine, accompanied by a momentary pang of guilt. Perhaps she had been hasty to take them both; surely, hers would have been enough.

As she fingered them, Jennifer noticed something. Although they appeared identical in every respect, she somehow knew which one was hers, almost as if it recognized her in a way the other one did not. As she thought back upon each time she, Heather, and Mark had gone out to the Second Ship, each of them had always picked up the headset they had initially tried on. It was odd that she hadn’t noticed it before.

Jennifer considered putting on her headset but discarded the temptation. Although she knew somehow that the ship would activate if she tried on the headset and commanded the computer link to activate, the thought of attracting Dr. Stephenson’s focus stopped her. Besides, she had more pressing business to attend to.

She pushed the two headsets back into her pack and slid into the chair, leaning forward as she logged in. Having been seriously disappointed in the Windows hard drive encryption software, she had written her own, and it was this algorithm that made it impossible that anyone else could log in and access the system. Even if the hard drive were stolen, there was only one other person on the planet who could decrypt it: Heather.

Jennifer pushed the thought of her friend from her mind. That was a weakness she could not afford to succumb to, at least not right now. She glanced up at the mirror, the sight of her new self startling her momentarily. Her long brown hair was gone, cut boyishly short, dyed black, and spiked up in a mildly Goth look. A lacy black dress, lace-up, knee-high, black boots. Even without any piercings, something she had no intention of inflicting on her body, she couldn’t recognize herself.

Still, it wouldn’t fool the dedicated professionals who might be looking for her, especially if they were studying video. Since her parents had no doubt now made her a milk carton girl, that was a concern. And although Las Vegas, with its millions of visitors, was a great place to lose yourself, closed circuit video was everywhere.

A high-speed wireless Internet connection was available from the hotel, but Jennifer didn’t connect to it, at least not directly. Instead, she brought the subspace transmitter chip online, scanning for computer networks close to her location. It took her three hops to find what she was looking for: a network with links to the hotel security system.

Security system network administrators were notoriously paranoid, and from what Jennifer observed as she hacked her way through the layers, the Bellagio staff took that paranoia to a new level. Every time she thought she had cracked the final level of security, she found another router, firewall, subnet mask, or encryption scheme.

When she finally managed to gain access to the cameras and video playback systems, she pumped her fist in the air. “Gotcha!”

Filling her screen with small windows for video display, Jennifer located the sequence of monitors that covered her path through the hotel, from entrance to lobby desk, all the way up to her room. Scanning back in time until she found her own image, she set to work editing the saved video data, carefully replacing all Jennifer pixels with background data from other frames.

As fast as she was, the task took almost an hour. Not good. She was going to have to write some custom video editing routines if she didn’t want to spend a quarter of every day doing this sort of thing.

Jennifer pressed the combination of keys that locked out her computer screen and stood up, stretching her arms and rolling her neck until she felt a series of small pops. Then, making her way across to the king-sized bed, she plopped down in the middle of it to take in the full reality of the room.

Jennifer let her eyes roam freely. The place practically dripped elegance, from the bathroom tile to the plush carpeting in the bedroom. A penthouse suite all to herself. If only Heather and Mark could see her now.

As she sat upright in the exact center of the bed, Jennifer felt a small drop of water splash on her arm. Glancing down she saw it repeated, then yet again. Realizing that tears had begun rolling down her cheeks, Jennifer wiped her face with the back of each hand.

This was stupid. She wasn’t Tom Hanks, curled up on a flophouse cot in the movie
Big
. Nobody was yelling and shooting in the next room. This was a friggin’ penthouse in the Bellagio for Christ’s sake. And she was damn sure the one in charge of what was happening.

Feeling a tremor work its way into her breathing, Jennifer grabbed one of the soft pillows and hugged it to her chest. The first sob killed what remained of her resistance, leaving her curled into a fetal ball, her face buried in the dampness of the pillowcase. As wave after wave of weakness shook her, Jennifer surrendered to it, and as she did, the darkness in her soul grew until it matched the gothic facade with which she had cloaked herself.

“What you got, Fielding?” Annoyance painted McKinney’s voice almost as red as his hair.

Bobby McKinney had been running cyber-security operations for the MGM Mirage and its owned hotels for so long he could sniff potential trouble, just from the reactions of the system administrators. He was known as a man who was completely incapable of sitting still, constantly making the rounds of every one of the Las Vegas hotels that operated under the MGM umbrella, poking his nose into every aspect of the most sophisticated security system outside of the NSA. Today it was Bellagio’s turn to endure his presence, the tired, nervous movements of the systems administrator showing the stress his twenty-hour workday and probing intellect produced.

The young computer technician glanced up from his workstation and shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Could be nothing.”

“What could be nothing?”

The technician ran a hand through his long blond hair, sweeping it back from his face in a movement that reminded McKinney of a schoolgirl. But, while Larry Fielding might straddle several sexually ambiguous boundaries, he was one of the best young computer geniuses in the entire company.

“Let me show you.” Fielding turned back to the keyboards stacked in front of him, an arrangement reminiscent of something you would see at the pipe organ inside the Mormon Tabernacle. His long, slender fingers touched the keys so rapidly and softly that he seemed to be stroking them.

The flat-panel monitors surrounding him changed to show the blackjack tables. As he stepped the video forward frame by frame, he oriented the view on a single table, and at the young Asian man sliding into a just-vacated seat. The dealer had just finished filling the shoe with the cards she had extracted from the Shuffle Master. With a small smile, the man pushed a stack of black chips onto the betting mark. Fielding froze the display.

“I spotted this guy when I was reviewing the table data. He played at five different tables, always making his big bet just after he sat down, winning all five of those first bets. After that, he reduced his bet and continued to play at that table for twenty or so minutes.”

McKinney’s eyes watched as the video jumped from table to table as the man played his first hand.

“Here, take a look at his expression as he places that first bet,” Fielding continued.

McKinney leaned in closer. “Intense isn’t he? I’d bet his heart is doing one twenty or better.”

“Now, watch his face as he continues to play. You’d swear it was two different people. There!” Fielding slowed the video to a crawl.

McKinney nodded. “Bored stiff. Looks like a guy that can’t wait to walk away from the game.”

“Exactly what I thought.”

“What I want to know is why my computer security team spotted that instead of the pit bosses?”

Fielding smiled. “You’ll have to ask them.”

“I intend to.” McKinney looked down at the computer technician. “But someone who figured out how to tamper with the shuffle machines isn’t what’s bothering you, is it?”

The technician pointed at one of the frozen video frames on the display. “It was so subtle I almost missed it. You see anything funny in the background?”

McKinney grabbed a chair and slid up beside Fielding, his blue eyes scanning the video frame. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Fielding left the display as it was, pulling up footage from additional cameras on the other monitors. These new views were not of the blackjack table, but of the hotel staff checking in guests. Each image showed the same exact time as the frozen frame at the blackjack table.

At first, McKinney failed to notice the connection. These new angles showed the check-in counter, which could be seen from a distance in the blackjack table shot. As he glanced back and forth between them, it hit him.

Seeing the light dawn in his eyes, Fielding pointed at a spot just over the Asian man’s shoulder. Just visible through the crowded background, a darkly dressed girl leaned across the check-in counter in discussion with a clerk. It was the only shot that showed her.

“I’ve played all the video forward and backward. There’s not another shot of this girl from any camera in the building.”

“None?”

“I’ve checked backward and forward from the time of this shot. Nothing.”

McKinney rubbed his chin, then raised his voice loud enough for everyone in the data center to hear him. “Okay, everyone listen up. We have a situation. I want a priority search of all our systems focused on the girl in this shot. I want to know everything about this young lady, especially her parents and how they managed to hack into our systems. Fielding will brief you. Take your direction from him.”

“What about the Asian?” Fielding asked.

“I’ll take care of that situation with the bosses. You stay focused on the data intrusion. Check all the camera data files to see when they were last modified.” McKinney pointed at the clerk across the desk from the girl. “And get me the name of that hotel clerk. I want to have a chat with her.”

McKinney paused at the door and looked around at the technical team staring at him, raising his voice once again. “One more thing. You will not discuss this with anyone except me. Is that clear?”