At that moment the door to the computer lab opened, and a woman stepped inside. Although ‘woman’ was not Matt’s first reaction, as he glanced up over the monitors; the more accurate term was ‘machine’, because that was the first thing anyone who saw the person now stepping through the doorway would notice – that her right arm, left leg and significant portions of her torso had been replaced with silver metal cybernetics. Matt knew Helen by sight from having seen her around the Academy a few times, in particular with Giselle at the dinner party, but he still always found himself doing a double‑take whenever he saw her. She was a big woman, probably taller than Jane by an inch and an inch wider, with light brown hair shaved down to a bootcamp buzzcut, a septum piercing and round, pimpled body-builder shoulders. Her right robotic arm ended in a rotating three-claw pincer, and her artificial leg was marginally thicker than her natural one and looked like someone had cannibalised the hydraulic press from a construction crane. She wore a dirty white tank top and black gym shorts.
The technopath blinked when she saw Matt and Jane were present. “Sorry,” she said, seeming to struggle with the words somewhat. Her human hand and leg moved slightly to cover up her cybernetic body parts. “I didn’t know that… um…”
“They don’t care,” interjected Azleena, leaning up and peering all five feet of herself over the monitors, “Come on. I need to spoof an authenticator.”
“Okay,” Helen echoed quietly, and with deliberate steps she shuffled around the desk towards the computers, still flushed slightly at being in her nightclothes. Matt stood and pulled Jane back with him to give the two some space.
“Were you asleep?” he asked jokingly, trying to catch Helen’s eye and smile. The cyborg flicked a nervous glance at him, looking like a big shy bulldog.
“I… okay, I-”
“Enough small talk,” Azleena snapped, clicking her fingers, “Let’s go.”
She leaned down near the screen and a moment later the technopath joined her. Their two heads beside each other gave Matt the impression of a coconut leaning against a passionfruit.
“I want to get into this server.”
“Yup.”
“Is it TP encrypted?”
A pause while Helen closed her eyes. The screen flickered.
“Yup.”
“What level?”
“Storebought.”
“Not military?”
“Nope.”
“Great. Where’s the weak spot?”
“If you input a code and get rejected, it retains data on how you were wrong. It’ll return it to counter if you make a straight challenge.”
“And then you’ve got the one-and-done as a data point.”
“Yup.”
Beside him, Matt could see Jane squinting in confusion, words beginning to form on her lips. Matt reached out and wrapped a discreet hand around her wrist, causing her to glance at him, to which he silently shook his head to indicate no, he didn’t understand what they were saying either, but nevertheless just shut up. Jane closed her mouth.
“Excellent. No limiter?”
“There is but it’s stupid,” the machine-woman grunted.
“Excellent. Start spooling.”
Helen’s eyes closed, and with her hand on the computer tower a surge of numbers suddenly began flashing all over the screen. A second later Azleena’s entire right-most monitor turned white, and a dense list of six-digit codes began cascading down column after column, line after line.
A few seconds passed. The numbers continued to race, filling up the screen as Azleena stared at them without blinking.
“Is… is this good?” Matt tentatively asked. Beside him, Jane tilted her head and levelled him with an incredulous stare, eyebrows furrowed at his blatant hypocrisy. “Lots of… random… numbers. Is that good?”
“There’s no such thing as random,” Azleena murmured, her eyes fixated on the screen as the columns continued to grow, pushing the list further and further down, “Only machines… taught to pretend… eventually…” Helen’s eyes stayed closed, and the lines of six-digit numbers continued to race, “…you find… the pattern…”
“Close?” asked the technopath.
“Almost…” Azleena breathed. Her eyes shone wide as satellites and her face was so close to the screen the tip of her button nose was almost touching. “You…” she muttered, staring transfixed, twitches of madness darting across her features and her words uncharacteristically guttural, “Are not… as smart…” Her thin lips curled. “…as you think… you are.”
Suddenly the genius snapped back in her seat. “Got it,” Azleena announced, blinking rapidly and quickly shaking her head like she’d just been mildly electrocuted. “Now. Login screen plus bring up source code. Show me their timer.”
“Yup.”
“727, 867.”
“Got it.” Helen entered the authenticator code and suddenly they had access to the server screen. Matt let out an involuntary gasp.
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“Well done,” he told them.
“Rudimentary,” Azleena replied, although the way she flicked her hair as she said it and shuffled slightly in her seat made Matt think it probably wasn’t.
“Does that mean it’s not the military?” he asked her.
“It means it’s got the highest level of protection there can be before you start getting suspicious why it’s so well‑guarded,” Azleena said with a shrug. Matt wasn’t sure if that counted as an answer.
Helen stood up and stepped back from the screen, allowing Matt and Jane to peer in. Disappointingly, the private server which Lionel had been given access to only seemed to contain stuff they’d already seen – folders containing some of the Legion’s financial records, which the attacker seemed to have just saved directly.
“Are they all the same?” Matt asked Azleena, feeling his heart drop somewhat. The genius quickly opened the documents one after the other, scrolling rapidly through.
“Yes.”
“Darn.” Matt put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands.
“So there’s nothing more?” asked Jane, sounding extremely disappointed.
“Looks that way,” the genius responded. But as Matt stared at the screen of predominantly white and empty folders, a sudden thought bugged him.
“Azleena,” he asked, “How big are these files? All up.”
The genius blinked, doing quick math. “38 meg.”
“And what’s the Bluin upload limit?”
“20.”
“And how much would the security package on this have cost?”
Azleena glanced up at Helen, who shrugged. “I don’t know,” the technopath answered, “Several thousand bucks?”
Matt turned back to Azleena. “And setting up private cloud storage?”
Azleena met his eye – and suddenly realisation dawned across her face.
“Inconsistent, if that’s the only use.”
“Exactly,” Matt agreed, “Why not just upload twice?”
“Sorry,” interrupted Jane, looking between the two of them with a mixture of frustration and confusion, plus the occasional glance at Helen’s looming robotic form, “I don’t get it. What does the cost mean? What’s being uploaded twice?”
Matt turned to her. “It’s overkill,” he explained, “Way too much effort for simply transferring forty megabytes of files. If that’s all you’re doing, why not just put a password on the files and send them in two tranches? Why spend a whole bunch of money setting up this secret server just to do that? Unless you already have the server ready. Unless that’s not all you’re going to do with it.”
Helena glanced down at Azleena, perched small and eager in her chair. “False face?”
“Could be,” nodded the genius. She pointed back to open, empty folders. “Go digging.”
Helena reached down and put her natural hand back on the computer tower, and once more closed her eyes. Her lips twitched.
“There’s more,” she murmured, “We’re not seeing it. We’re getting… hngh. It’s very clever. It doesn’t want to talk.”
“Make it,” Azleena ordered. Beneath their lids, Helen’s eyes continued to slide back and forth.
“Shh-shh-shh-shh-shh,” she whispered, “Shh-shh-shh. I know you’re there. No hiding. I’ve got you. Yup. Yup. There. There!” Her eyes flashed open. “I’ve got admin view.”
And suddenly the white on the screen blinked and the contents of the server they were looking into was no longer blank but overflowing. Folders and folders and folders – terabytes of material, all alphabetised and labelled. All with different names.
“Bloody hell,” Azleena muttered. She leaned forward. “Look at it all. What the hell.”
“Jackpot,” mumbled Helen, “Told you.”
“What is it?” Jane demanded, also leaning forward, “What’s there?”
“What isn’t?” Azleena murmured. She was clicking through files and folders at lightning pace, opening and closing documents so quickly nobody else could keep up. “This is- these are Bluin profiles. Spoof VPNs. Connect_Conclusion24, the one who sent the building info, that’s all from here, same with JOEY3X – at least a dozen of them. Usernames and passwords.” She flew out of one folder and into another. “Holy crap. These guys are DawnWatch.”
“What?” Jane yelped.
“Yup,” Azleena stated, files racing across the screen like leaves in a tornado, “Wow, I mean they didn’t just- they created the whole site. This is all the keys, the back-code. They’ve even- wow, there is complex data feeding into this. Satellites. How are they piggybacking off satellites?”
Matt and Jane exchanged horrified looks.
“Mary mother of- half the world is compromised,” Azleena continued, her words flying as thick and fast as the images on the screen, “Company records, government departments, this is- there is so much confidential stuff. So much. How are they getting this? How are they- wait here we go. Big… psychological profile? On this guy. This man, who is… I don’t know. But this reads like military. Lots redacted. But that’s historical, no, here, they’re keeping watch.” She clicked over before any of them could get a word in. “Screw me sideways there’s another one. Except he’s… identical? And they- goddamn, they’ve got everything. They’ve got taps on this guy’s phone, his computer logs. Every search. And again, all these Bluin accounts, they’re-” Azleena abruptly stopped. “They’ve got his porn.”
“Pardon?” said Matt, still struggling to take everything in.
“Yeah!” the genius laughed, although the mirth died out quite rapidly, “There’s an algorithm tracking the features of every woman he looks at, and then it amalgamates and…”
Her voice trailed off as she clicked an image file open, and the screen filled up with a picture of a woman, heart-faced, full-lipped, red-haired.
“What the hell…” Jane whispered.
“This is incredible,” Azleena continued, “It’s an averaging of features whoever this they’re profiling is attracted to, I mean the level of depth, of focus, they- oh look, there’s Captain Dawn’s DNA.”
“What?!” Matt and Jane both yelled at the same time. The genius didn’t even look back at them, simply gave a weak-wristed wave.
“Oh it’s not that big a deal, that’s been out for a while now. It got shared with a few labs in the seventies. I mean it’s supposed to be kept confidential, but compared to the rest of this…”
Azleena’s voice trailed off, becoming lost in the sound of her clicking as she sped folder to folder. “What’s this then, this one’s huge. I’ve got… message logs to an escort. They wanted her focused on one man… thousands of dollars. Tens of thousands I- weeks of her time. For… talking? Reports back. ‘Today I talked to him’. ‘Today we flirted’. ‘He’s interested’. ‘He said he’s left his girlfriend’. I don’t-” Azleena clicked over to something else. “Ok, and now we’ve got complaint forms to the Board of Veterinary Medicine. Complaints… about a student? I mean why bother… well she’s expelled. Okay, that’s nonsensical. Next folder. Social media ads. Targeted. Ultra-targeted? They’ve practically hacked this girl’s phone. To put job ads?”
“Slow down,” Matt said, “I can’t follow.” But Azleena just kept powering onwards.
“All for some delivery place?” she murmured, “But they’re in there too, they own it, subcontracted from a bigger company for one very specific route… wow that’s a lot of money. Why would you pay that- anyway, I don’t… hey, it’s the same girl. Same girl, same- why are they so focused on, I don’t- wait no I’ve got it backwards. Image searches.” She opened a folder and the screen filled with tiny thumbnails of photographs, thousands of them. “Social media images searches. Drivers licenses. They- and then profiles of them. A lesser number. They’re narrowing it down. Down and down and down. Until it’s only her. Her and her and her. This one girl. She’s no one, but they’ve got her bank statements, her credit cards, her registration, her lease agreement. Family history, psychological profile. Everything about her, everywhere she goes. Every facet. Why?”
In the neon-lit night of the computer room, as the bulk of the Academy lay sleeping, Matt, Jane, and Helen watched the files flying across the screen and stayed silent, stunned, as Azleena spun in her chair to look at them, her tiny face scrunched in confusion, and asked what they were all slowly thinking, the question that rapidly dawned-
“Who the hell is Emily?”