The Heist of Hollow London, page 10
Drienne had been on the verge of pointing out he might not have long left anyway, so may as well go for broke, but it was good she hadn’t said that, it might easily have backfired.
11
ANY QUESTIONS?
Loren had slept for ages, and was still half asleep when they shuffled back into Mia’s living room and found a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman standing there. She was tall and powerful and had eyes like dark honey. She introduced herself as Nadi and shook Loren’s hand, and Loren wished they’d gone to the bathroom, freshened up, and checked their hair before coming out here.
Loren hadn’t interacted much with securits. The IM farm had a cohort of them, but their focus had always been on potential saboteurs and espionage, rather than problems among the workforce. Loren had barely noticed them. They’d have noticed this one.
The two of them exchanged the usual information: where were you sited, what was your role (as if it wasn’t obvious), where did they stick you before selling you, where were you when you heard the company had gone down. While they ran through this stuff, Loren tried to think of something else to keep the conversation going, something that wasn’t boring.
Nadi finished explaining how she’d been sent via the resort in Montevideo, and the conversation fell dead. Nadi smiled slightly and glanced around the room.
“You been to Vancouver before?” Loren asked. Considering they were so unaccustomed to small talk, coming up with this question seemed a minor triumph.
“No, until a few days ago I’d never gone west of Strasbourg.”
“Same. I mean, not with the specific geography, but I never got to go anywhere either.”
“It’s big, right? Vancouver, I mean.”
“I know. There’s a huge park across the bay, I might go down there if there’s time before—”
Mia called their names. She wanted them all to gather around her antique twentieth-c-modern Brazilian rosewood dining table while she detailed the plan in full.
* * *
Mia stood at the head of the table and explained it all with such clarity and confidence, it sounded like the operation couldn’t possibly fail. But a few aspects of it nagged at Loren. They didn’t like how convoluted it was to get the device inside the cyc plant, and when Mia asked if there were any questions, Loren asked if there wasn’t an easier way of doing it.
“You can’t just walk in with a device like that,” Mia said. “You can’t just walk in with anything. They’re very particular about that.”
“Can’t we target it from outside the building?” said Arlo.
“Nope,” said Loren. “Buildings all have shielding against those kinds of attack. Even old ones like that will have it. You have to get inside and as close as you can.”
“Exactly,” said Mia. “Believe me, I have thought a lot about this, and it really is the only way.”
Kline raised the question of whether anyone at the plant might recognize Arlo as a clone of someone who formerly worked there.
“That’s a good question,” Mia said. “But everyone who was there at the same time as Samson has long since moved on. And there certainly won’t be any pictures of him on the walls to commemorate what a valued employee he was.”
Arlo, Drienne, and Kline laughed at this.
“I still feel,” said Loren, “like the process of getting the device in there is kind of tricky?”
“It’s as simple as I can make it,” said Mia.
“I’m not saying it’s trickier than it needs to be, just there are several points where things could go wrong.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I dunno, I’m just raising the concern now because … it seems like the moment to raise concerns. There’s stuff we can’t control that depends on the circumstances on the day. And then Arlo’s got to reach the locker without being seen—”
“Not necessarily,” said Arlo. “Whether I’m seen isn’t the main thing, it’s whether I’m seen as suspicious.”
“Which brings me to another thing, which is Arlo, Kline, and Nadi have to not get found out and keep their stories and identities straight until we get clear of the place.”
“Yes,” said Mia. “What’s your question?”
“I guess I don’t have one, I just wanted to offer them as points for discussion.”
“Okay,” Mia said. “Let’s discuss those points.” She looked across the crew. “Anyone want to jump in?”
No one spoke for a moment, and Loren suddenly felt like they’d done something wrong.
Then, Nadi said, “Yeah I … I don’t know how I’ll be at pretending to be someone else, I haven’t really had to do that before.”
“Yours is the easiest,” said Mia. “You just have to lie about your name and where you come from. In all other respects you can just be you—say you’re an Oakseed securit who’s been transferred to the plant.”
“But why would she be transferred to the plant?” asked Loren.
Mia winced and held up a hand. “You’re really overestimating how many questions people will ask. They accept company decisions there. It’s not worth anyone’s while to care.”
“Mia does know the plant,” said Arlo, “and we don’t, so maybe we should trust what she’s telling us about what it’s like?”
Loren wanted to point out that Mia’s experience was outdated, as she’d admitted herself, but instead they looked to Arlo and Drienne. “And you’re okay with what you’re being asked to do?”
Arlo and Drienne glanced at each other briefly. “Yeah, sure,” said Drienne. “We bullshit people every goddamn day, it’s like breathing to us.” She turned to Mia and winked.
“Good,” said Mia. “Anyone else want to comment? Or can we move on?”
Loren decided to stay quiet for the rest of the meeting, in case they found themself returned for a refund. But Mia wouldn’t do that now, would she? Not now that Loren had heard the plan.
“I know how Samson set the Coyne up because I saw it,” Mia said. “It’ll appear to only contain a much smaller amount of money in the local currency. That’s what they call a false tray. It’s a deflection tactic to stop people looking too closely. The more important contents are encrypted. It’s very important you leave the tray as it is, because if you’re found carrying the Coyne and someone checks what’s on it, it’ll be much less suspicious. And also, it means we can be sure the real contents are just as Samson left them and no one’s skimmed anything off the top. Anyone who lifts the tray will forfeit their share. Okay?”
Everyone murmured in the affirmative.
“I’ll be asking each of you to repeat the plan back to me, step by step, at least a couple of times before you leave. No one writes down or records any detail of the plan, yes?”
Everyone assented to this as well.
“I mean,” said Loren, breaking their vow not to speak, “if anyone forgets any details, they can always ask me. I remember everything.”
“I’m sure that will come in handy,” said Mia.
* * *
After the briefing was over, Nadi sought Loren out to apologize. She found them sitting on the balcony.
“Apologize for what?” said Loren with a twitch of their head.
“I tried to, I dunno, help you out, I guess.”
“When Mia said let’s discuss the points I raised?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you apologizing? You’re the only one who said anything.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it helped. It just made me look kind of stupid.”
“I don’t think it made you look stupid. I also don’t think it helped. But that’s not your fault. I appreciated it.”
“Good.”
Loren looked out across the treetops. “She’s got a classic tech mentality. See it all the time in xecs in my area. Thinks you just need to get people with different skills together and give them the right leadership and it all happens. Don’t like it when you bring them problems, or say you’re not sure you can do what they’re asking you to do.”
“I think I probably can do it.”
Loren smiled at Nadi. “I bet you can. I think I can do my bit too. There’s just a lot of, you know, variables.”
Nadi nodded. “Variables is something I know about.”
“’Course, yeah. You want a drink?”
There was something Nadi hadn’t said to Arlo when they spoke before, because she was afraid it sounded dumb. A reason she felt glad she’d been bought for this job instead of being part of another muscle squad: She was getting to work with people who weren’t securits, and already she was realizing just how deeply unhappy she’d been for years and years, having to fit in with them, not even considering she could be any other way. She felt like she’d surfaced from being deep underwater, and if they pulled off this job, she could spend the rest of her life breathing fresh air.
12
A CROSS BETWEEN A TRASH FIRE AND A TOXIC SWAMP, LITERALLY
“Are you looking forward to seeing England again?” Mia said to Arlo, just after Loren had gone to catch their flight. It was just the three of them now, and Arlo was pulling on his shoes while Drienne lay on Mia’s sofa, blowing on her fingernails to make the coat of Naildit dry. They were both dressed in the muted style of house staff, so as to appear less conspicuous as they came and went from Mia’s apartment. They’d chuckled when they’d first donned the short-sleeved, high-collared shirts and loose, pocket-heavy pants.
“We won’t be going anyplace I ever knew,” said Arlo.
“No, but it’ll still be familiar,” said Mia. “Won’t it?”
“When I lived there, I spent all my time at the nursery, which was just like an Oakseed nursery anywhere else except most of the staff had English accents. There was no sense of place. They never even told us where it was exactly, because they didn’t want us to be able to make any plans to run away. Practically the only time we went outdoors was to play five-a-side football every morning on the court outside the nursery.”
Mia smiled. “What position did you play?”
“Goalkeeper.”
She smiled more broadly. “I was a goalkeeper! Were you any good?”
“I wasn’t bad. You?”
“I was great. I was gonna turn pro, but then Oakseed happened.”
“At my nursery in Boston,” Drienne said, “when they weren’t teaching us they’d use us as test subjects, get us to beta new products, et cetera. All our free time was in controlled environments so they could keep on shaping us psychologically. No outside influences.”
“Yes, same at mine,” said Arlo. “So I really don’t feel any connection to England at all.”
“But then you must feel curious about what it’s really like,” said Mia.
“I hear London is a fucking trash fire,” said Drienne. “Like, a cross between a trash fire and a toxic swamp. Literally.”
* * *
Each member of the crew had an alt-id created for the operation by Loren and Kline. Loren, Kline, and Nadi would all pose as mades with different names and different backgrounds from their own. With so many Oakseed mades changing hands right now, discrepancies in the records would be hard to pick out, and people often changed the names of mades after buying them anyway, so if you had the right credentials, forging a record was simple and unlikely to be noticed. As Mia had explained, Nadi would be operating under a slightly reworked version of her real identity, under the name Pris Hamoudi.
Loren’s and Kline’s identities were not attached to Mia, as the aim was to avoid any of this being traced back to her, but they had to be held by someone. It was possible to create fake holders, but it was easier and more effective to attach the records to random, real people who were wealthy enough to privately hold mades, and who were largely off-grid. Loren found two such people, spoofed their identities, registered Kline to one of them under the name William Clancy, and themself to the other under the name Cas Woodforde. Loren also set up intercepts so that if anyone tried to check any of this, Loren would be able to respond posing as Kline’s holder and Kline would be able to respond posing as Loren’s holder, and confirm their made hadn’t gone rogue.
Loren’s concerns about the job hadn’t gone away, but they were really enjoying the tools Mia had sourced for them to use.
The alt-ids for Drienne and Arlo were a different matter. A debranding op like this involved liaising with xecs in charge of a made-heavy workforce, and RookDivest would send nats to do it. It was riskier for Arlo and Drienne to pose as nats—any crime committed by a made was more serious if carried out while posing as a nat—but Mia insisted they do so. Loren created their ids and Kline established their credentials as RookDivest employees: Drienne would be Annie Clarke, Arlo would be Roland Fernandes. The proximity to their real names was deliberate, to make it easier for them both to remember.
All five of them were supplied with different cover stories about why they were traveling from Vancouver to England, and they traveled in three separate groups. Kline and (to Loren’s disappointment) Nadi went first, because they had the most stuff to set up. They flew overnight to Birmingham and shared a car down to London. Loren took a flight into Manchester and traveled down from there. Drienne and Arlo were leaving tonight, going directly to London, and they had a few hours to kill.
* * *
Mia had purchased two drone squadrons; standard equipment for the kind of work Arlo and Drienne would be pretending to carry out in London. Each squadron packed neatly into a light carrying case: Mia had acquired two slightly used sets, rightly pointing out that this would look more authentic than brand-new ones. Arlo and Drienne had already spent a day familiarizing themselves with their squadrons and allowing the squadrons to become familiar with them. This kind of equipment became accustomed to your speech patterns and your way of working, so it could respond to you more quickly and accurately, and could anticipate your instructions before you issued them. Mia said another session with them would be time well spent, so Drienne and Arlo traveled out to a hollow urban zone south of Vancouver—nowhere near the same level of decay as London, it had no squatting population to speak of and its commercial district was basically intact, just dirty and a little overgrown with weeds. It looked like it had some hope of regeneration, and most importantly plenty of signage survived for them to practice on.
When Arlo opened his case, his squadron stood to attention, all sixteen of them. They had a retro cartoony design, like old-fashioned avatars of little spacemen, and they were all different colors so you could quickly tell them apart. The dark purple one wished him a good morning and asked him what they were doing today.
Arlo had never been in charge of anyone in his life before he’d been given this squadron. Even his slate had always felt like it was in charge of him: it received his schedule and told him what he was meant to be doing each day, and it dictated the things he was and wasn’t allowed to know according to corporate policy.
He explained to the squadron they needed to strip Oakseed branding off everything in the mini-mall. Oakseed had been the dominant brand in this district, having made the usual deal with local government to provide all the typical suburban facilities—food outlets, a gym, vehicle dealership, funeral parlor, et cetera. The squadron acknowledged the instruction and went to work—they didn’t ask why this was being done in a district that was clearly not going to be reactivated anytime soon, even though their intelligence was sufficient to register such a question. It wasn’t their place to ask.
The drones were adept at seeking out branding and using their tools to scrub it—either by dissolving the top layer of whatever surface it had been applied to, or altering its color, or by destroying the object entirely. Arlo approached the job as if the redevelopment was going to keep the structure in place, telling the squadron how thorough they needed to be and indicating when they could move on. Some properties only needed to be debranded enough to seem clean to prospective buyers who wouldn’t ever visit in person; some needed their entire previous existence purged, leaving no trace they had ever been anything else.
When Arlo and Drienne reconvened at the end of this session, he could detect a difference in manner between his squadron and Drienne’s. He might have been imagining it, but hers seemed to hover behind her in a looser formation than his did, and they seemed to speak with a lightly mocking tone. He refrained from mentioning this to her, in case she identified ways in which his personality had imprinted on his own squadron, and made fun of him for it.
13
STALKING IS LESS SUSPICIOUS
Kline and Nadi had arrived in London via the northwest suburbs yesterday afternoon, then taken the overline to the Oakseed cyc plant, which was located in the north of the city and was called Kentish Cyc (the name was used interchangeably for the plant itself and the corpurbation that now surrounded it). They’d gone to their separate apartments—Kline in the transient block on one side of the street, Nadi in one of the workers’ blocks directly opposite. Kline had bought some food from the minivend at the base of the block, entered the apartment he’d booked, and since then had not left these two rooms. He didn’t want the neighbors to see him, he didn’t want anyone in the area to see him, he wanted to appear on as few cams as possible. He didn’t even want to leave traces with his alt-id: if one piece of activity was connected back to him, it could all be connected back to him. Besides, the very air in London made him itch, and he wasn’t inclined to go walking around in it.
The entire corpurbation around Kentish Cyc extended no more than a couple of hundred meters from the plant; a few of the smarter houses had been renovated for habitation by the xecs, but the workforce lived in simple princrete blocks that lined what had once been the main road. The plant itself was opposite what had once been Kentish Town Station, but was now a cheap coffeehouse called Bizarre?!; the platform for the overline had been constructed just next to it. Kline wasn’t missing anything by not getting out and seeing the sights. He’d already seen the entire place. Instead he just stayed in his rooms, did his work, and thought about what he’d do when he got out of here with his freedom.
