Lisa Smedman - The Lucifer desk

The guard grunted out a reply as he rushed past. “It fragging figures. Whenever there’s a system glitch, it’s on my shift.” He obviously didn’t yet realize the extent of the “glitch.”

Carla slowed to a brisk walk as she rounded a corner. Unwilling to risk the elevator, in case the spirit had wiped its programming as well, she entered the first stairwell she found. She climbed eight flights, paused to catch her breath, then emerged onto the tenth floor, which housed a number of office units. Now it was just a matter of working her way to the building’s outermost corridor and finding the skywalk that connected it to the next tower.

Aside from the few security guards who rushed past her, few of the employees on this floor seemed to realize the chaos that had broken out several stories below them. The corridors were filled with the usual hum of conversation and background office noise.

After a few minutes of searching. Carla found the skywalk that led to Tower C-the “Chrysanthemum Tower.” This was the heart of the beast; unlike the other five skyscrapers, which rented space to a variety of different businesses, Tower C was occupied solely by Mitsuhama Computer Technologies. For this reason, it was under much tighter security than the rest of the office complex. Not only was there a gate and a monitor system at the point where the skywalk joined the tower, but a live guard as well.

The guard was a young fellow with sharp features and cratered skin. Japanese, judging by his surname. An oversized pistol hung in a hoister at his hip. Carla had been prepared for that; she’d expected to have to bluff her way past an armed guard or two. Rut when she saw the retinal scanner that was built into the badge-recognition unit, her heart sank. There was no way she’d get past that.

In another moment, the guard would realize that she wasn’t the woman whose name and scan code were on the badge. He’d demand to see some authentic ID, and would call his superiors to deal with the attempted intrusion. Things would be tense for a moment or two, but eventually, once somebody saw her press pass, they’d be forced to let her go. She was simply too well known, too public a figure, to rough up. The mythical “power of the press” would protect her. But it was still fragging disappointing to have come this far, only to have her plans fall apart.

Then Carla noted the way the guard was pacing back and forth in front of the gate. His manner suggested intense frustration. He reminded Carla of the security guard she’d encountered earlier in the hallway, and that guard’s grumbled comments. And that gave her an idea.

The young guard waved her toward the gate. When he read her employee badge he showed immediate interest. “I hear there’s some trouble in the display hall.” he said eagerly. It was obvious he wished he could be seeing a little of that trouble himself.

She kept her eyes on the ground, trying to work up some tears. As she slid the employee badge through the scanner, she dug a manicured fingernail into her other palm, deliberately cutting the skin. That did it. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Hai,” she said, giving the head bob that was the equivalent of an abbreviated bow. She’d decided to play the role of the demure, eyes-downcast Japanese woman to the hilt. She could do the accent perfectly, but she was taking a gamble, hoping he wouldn’t switch to Japanese. With luck, he’d be a nishi or sanshi, with only a poor grasp of the language. She’d only remembered enough of her high-school Japanese to order sushi, recite her name, and count to ten.

“Two members of my tour group were seriously injured,” she told the guard. “I have been called to give a personal report.” She sighed heavily, and let a tear trickle down her cheek. “Everything always happens on my shift.”

The guard nodded his sympathy and lifted the retscan unit from its cradle. Carla buried her face in her hands, pretending to be ashamed of her tears, and uttered a series of short, hiccuping sobs. “I never asked to be reassigned to the display hall. I should be in Accounting. That’s what I’m trained for. And now I’ll be fired!” She kept wiping tears from her eyes, deliberately getting her hands in he way of the scanner.

After one or two attempts to lift the ret-scan unit to Carla's eyes, the young guard gave up. “Go.” he said to her at last. “Make your report. And good luck.”

“Thank you.”

Carla waited until she was around the corner to break into a wide grin. She was inside! She focused on the icon in her cybereye’s field of view that would activate the file containing the map Corwin had downloaded on his most recent run into the Mitsuhama mainframe. The datalink to her cybereye let her read information uploaded to it. Now all she had to do was follow the map to the elevator that led down to the research lab. And hope that everything was going according to plan. Everything could still come unglued if she ran into any more security roadblocks. Or if Corwin ran into any ice. Or if the guard who’d just let her slip through his post without a retinal scan learned that an employee from the Byte of the Future exhibit had lost her badge. Or if…

Carla shook her head, chiding herself for letting her worries overtake her. The only thing now was to get as far as she could. And to keep the camera in her cybereye rolling. The chip she was using had plenty of memory, but if need be she had plenty more to spare.

Carla walked down the hallway, trying not to stare at the security cameras. The thirtieth floor of the Chrysanthemum Tower was an area of plush carpets, dark wooden doors that looked as if they were made of ebony, and expensive bio-luminescent lighting panels. This was the floor occupied by MCT Seattle’s middle management; gleaming chrome name plates, set in the middle of the polished black doors, bore the names of several of the people who’d been saying “no comment” to Carla recently. She resisted the urge to try any of the doors. The offices were sure to be well protected by sophisticated alarms and magic-activated intruder alert systems.

Since it was Saturday, only a few of the offices were occupied. The occasional office worker passed her in the hallway, but the normal hustle and buzz of a busy office complex was missing. Although Mitsuhama followed the Japanese tradition of expecting its employees to work copious amounts of overtime, few actually came in to work on a weekend in person; most put in the extra hours at home-based work stations.

According to the map in Carla’s cybereye, the elevator that led to the research lab was just ahead, around a bend in the corridor. She stopped midway down the ball and pushed open the door to a washroom. As she’d suspected, the room was not monitored by camera-at least, no obvious monitors were in evidence. It was probably wired for sound, however, so she went through the motions of flushing the toilet and washing her hands in the sink.

Carla pulled out her cel phone, switched off its visual pickup, and dialed a number. She heard a ring, a brief pause, and then another ring again as the call was routed through a series of telecommunications grids. If Mitsuhama security was monitoring this call by picking up its frequency from a remote scanner, they’d log it as being made from a rented cel phone to an auto body shop in Renton. In fact, the call was only being patched through that number-and from there, through telecommunications grids in Vancouver, Hong Kong, Seoul, and San Francisco-and back again to a Seattle residence, where the young decker Corwin answered the phone.

“Albert’s Auto Body,” he said. “Don’t get bent; we’ll fix that dent.”

Despite her nervousness, Carla smiled. She used the rough code they’d prearranged. “Hello. I’m calling about the car I dropped off this morning. The Mitsubishi Runabout with the dented side panel. Has it been fixed yet?”