The Passionate Mistake (4 page)

Chapter
Four

She couldn’t break through the next layer of protection. She’d been working on it for three days now. It was driving her mad with frustration. She’d start
ed rewriting everyone’s code, just to pass the time. Oh, all improvements. Let’s see anyone complain when their lame piece of half-assed software started turning somersaults. People were looking at their screens in bewilderment.

Secretly she loved that
gob smacked stare. The wide open eyes, raised brows, gaping mouth; the furtive sideways glance, trying to see if anyone was watching them.

It wasn’t wise
to play around like this. But dammit, neither was throwing a royal tantrum; which was what she really wanted to do. So far she had refrained. Instead, in between designing worms of greater and greater complexity, she fixed every bug in each team’s software and added beautiful curlicues at the corners of all internal documents.

She completed
chores and errands with a ferocious speed and intensity, glared at those who tried to engage her in conversation and hid in various sequestered cubicles the instant she had finished her assigned work, so no one could discover her and give her more to do. Every free moment she was trying to break in.

To no avail.
She was beginning to suspect there was a programmer of greater skill and perhaps even – she hated to admit it – ability, say even, with a wince, intellect – at work here; Or greater knowledge, of course. That was always possible. There were heights as yet unscaled by her; theoretically, at least.

She started to plan her physical attack, unable to get past fire as an option for evacuating everyone from the IT area at the rear of the ground floor, as well as everywhere else. She played at being the dumb new employee and asked
Francine – the designated Fire Warden – to explain the evacuation procedure a couple of times through.

“What’s the record for clearing the building?”

“Three minutes, twelve seconds.”

“Okay, and how about re-entry? How long do they make people stay outside before they’re allowed back in again?

“That depends on the fire service. As soon as they’ve checked the place over we can go back in.”

“Is there some way of telling where the alarm was triggered?”

“I think so. Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s one of those diagrams with a flashing light on it-”

“An LED.”

“Yeah, whatever. Anyway it shows where the trigger was.”

“Thanks. That stuff’s good to know.
Wouldn’t want to be running around like a headless chicken if there was an emergency.”

“Oh yeah, sure.
Do you want to know the earthquake procedure too?”

“Oh no, no that’s fine.
One at a time.”

Francine
looked puzzled, but pleased to be the expert, and Cathy escaped to do yet another walk through, carrying a folder clasped to her chest and walking briskly as if on an errand.

The top floor held the Platform Division’s big, glossy offi
ces, enclosed by massive glass windows and containing ten giant desks with half-a-dozen monitors each, and five smug occupants. Jay had confirmed they were DigiCom’s finest up in their own locked area working on who-knew-what. On the opposite side of the atrium was Mike Summer’s suite with his office and his guardian dragon of a personal assistant, all rigid politeness and tight smiles that didn’t reach her eyes. In the middle, towards the back of the building, were the meeting rooms and the gym.

Downstairs was all open plan but the twisted shapes of the developer
s’ workstations gave some concealment around the Datacentre. She went carefully past there once, twice, and a third time a little later, trying to work out who would be able to see her hunched over the screen and the pull-out keyboard that was kept in the Datacentre for direct access to the servers.

She’d have to work
quickly to establish her rootkit. In and out, and examine her findings from a remote location. She had set the official False Fire Alarm Date as Friday, but on Thursday Mike Summers called a whole-company competition. It created a low-level hum of excitement through the building. Even she – disconnected as she was – felt the change, like a variation in temperature or air pressure. For the programmers this meant a chance to show off for the boss. Maybe some choice plum of a prize too, though nothing was named.

He’d organized them before but they definitely weren’t routine, she found out when she asked Jay – whose continual
air of wide-eyed innocence made him an unsuspicious source of information in her eyes. Mike Summers liked to test the mettle of his staff, get them to play against each other and show off their paces. It was fun. It was a challenge. A game and a trial. Jay was excited about the whole thing.

Cathy rolled her eyes at the idea, cynical and suspicious of motives. This wasn’t profitable. How many thousands of dollars did he waste in paying people to sit around writing programs that would never be
sold? It was craziness typical of him, the man who built treehouses and slides so his employees could play at being kids again.

They gathered in the atrium, beanbags and laptops in hand, a crowd of casually dressed and under-groomed
technos. No one had set Cathy a specific task so she hovered on the fringes, curious to see how this would pan out. He might as well waste her wage along with everyone else’s.

When everyone had settled, Mike stepped out and pointed to the big screen. There was a
set of specifications. Nothing too exotic. It could easily be met with a toy algorithm. She thought it would take maybe twenty minutes of work.

“Design that program. First one c
omplete and running wins the round,” was all he said; short and to the point. There was a gentle pattering noise, like rain striking a roof; the sound of hundreds of fingertips softly, swiftly hitting keys.

At that moment as she looked around she realized everyone was here. Which meant the
Datacentre was isolated. Probably not for long, though.

She sidled away, her heart
beginning to thump, her hand going up to brush against her shirt to check her USB drive was there in its hiding place. Yes. Yes.
Now
.

She was right. In this moment no one sat at any of the workstations, and they shielded the atrium – just barely, but it was enough – from sight. Moving quickly she checked first Jay’s then Alex’s work areas, knowing each of them had swipe card access to the IT area and
Datacentre. Jay’s workstation was clear but Alex had left all his gear draped around his cave-like workstation. She rifled through his satchel, the coat hanging on his chair, before seeing the corner of the distinctive red card poking out from under a notebook on the desk. Yes!

She took it, tucking it into her palm, rubbing the edge back and forth, back and forth with the thumb of her other hand as she skirted the
treehouse and slide, went through the grove of palm trees and emerged with a final cautious check in every direction including upwards towards the windows of the Platform Division which overlooked the developers area. No one was there either; all in the atrium defending their positions as the best in the company, of course.

Her fingers shook as she swiped the card. The first time through the machine there was no beep or clunk of the door and when she pushed on the handle she found it still firmly locked. Her heart jumped up to her throat. She tried a second time and this time it registered and the familiar clunk sounded.

She’d been hearing that sound for three weeks now and snarling internally each time. Now it sang to her, a siren song of success. She went straight to the Datacentre within the IT area, swiping the stolen card again at this second locked door. It registered straight away.

The place was noisy with the roar of fans and the ventilation system, and much colder than the rest of the air conditioned building so she shivered even in her baggy jeans.

The USB port was her Mecca, the key sliding in sweetly. As the flashing of the LED began she pulled out the keyboard and switched on the monitor. The few seconds it took to warm up and show the brand name were an eternity. She breathed on her fingers to keep them from stiffening in the cold.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered softly, her leg jiggling a frantic rhythm. Experimenting, she discovered she could pull the keyboard downwards and sideways at an angle so she could hide halfway concealed by the bank of servers. She knelt and started the search to confirm the
rootkit’s ownership of the system. “Yes!” she hissed, finding it burrowed in tight, only showing on her specialized search. No observer would find it. It was designed for sophisticated misdirection. The only way it could be stripped out now without her own insider knowledge was to destroy the motherboard. She owned this computer.

She took a moment more to be sure the subverted computer was
networked to all the others. Yes again! Oh, oh thanks be to the universe, it was going to be okay. She was done. The USB drive went back into hiding, the monitor off and the keyboard away and she was out of the IT area in ten heartbeats that pulsed loudly in her ears. She was panting, the adrenaline load almost overwhelming. She thought she might be sick and she willed it sternly away. No time for that now. The swipe card went back to its place under the notebook on Alex’s desk and she found a computer in the developers’ area no one had claimed today and started it up. It was dangerous to check from within the building if anyone was watching the system, but no one had reason to be suspicious. This once – just this once – she would take the chance.

She logged into the online server and found the
Datacentre’s computer had called in as directed. She followed the link straight back, taking over all the computers on the network. She was grinning madly, feeling the heated flush of victory charging through her.

The library of source code was hers. Was . . .

She searched again.

These were the production servers. They
must
have the entire library on them. It
had
to be there.

She searched a third time.

It wasn’t.

She pressed a clenched fist to her mouth so she wouldn’t scream
aloud in rage and despair.

Where was it?
If not here, where could it
possibly
be?

She leaned far back in her chair, her fingers burrowing deep into her hair, twisting the
strands in their confining pigtails until her scalp ached. She looked upwards, straight into the Platform Division’s empty offices.

The empty,
locked
offices; where all the screens, all the whiteboards faced away from the centre of the building so no one else could see them; where internal blinds could be lowered to block all sight of the rooms.

She caught a breath.
Stood. Went to the stairwell and climbed, taking the steps two at a time. At the top she walked only as far as she go without being seen from the ground floor of the atrium. She craned her neck, scanning . . .

There.
A chain, securing the computer to the floor. And there. Another one.

She drew a sobbing breath. They were there. They were inside. Chained down computers behind a locked door and –
she was willing to swear – bulletproof glass. Of course. Hidden in plain sight.

The
Datacentre had never been the target. This was.

Oh God, how to get inside there?
Only Mike Summers and the five programmers who worked there – the elite programmers of the Platform Division – had the necessary clearance.

There was no way to do it without arousing suspicion. Even if she
cosied up to one of the five programmers there was no need, no excuse for Cathy-the-go-fer to be in that secure room.

She couldn’t get in that way.
But what if . . .

What if she got in there on her own merits?

Sure, with only her fake identity she had no apparent qualifications, nothing to recommend her. But if she’d learnt one thing about DigiCom it was that the company didn’t stand on ceremony. If she could outperform the other programmers to a high enough level, that might be her ticket into that locked room and thus out of here for good.

She wouldn’t go out there with all guns blazing, challenging the others on their own turf.
That would draw too much attention. No, she’d work out of sight of everyone else and simply send in her answers. Then she’d have a quiet word to Mike Summers afterwards to reveal herself as the secret genius. Awkward and a bit of a strange way of doing things, but this was a man who managed a company full of treehouses and other playground equipment. He was well used to weirdness. She thought he would probably take the whole thing in his stride.

She had to be the best
, though, or near the best. It was all speculation until she placed in the competition. She could do it,
must
do it; was used to cleaning up at competitions like this, held at university and independent programming events.