- Joined
- Jan 30, 2012
- Location
- Vaucluse, SC
It was child’s play.
Her finger tips danced across the screen of her ultraslim tablet. The top quarter of the screen showed a nearly complete 7 digit code, while the rest was a game of candy crush. The network security for the Highrise they wanted access to was so lax that hacking it was little more than a plug-and-play job. Upload a program, watch it work, just make sure no one notices until it’s too late and no more effort was really needed. It was such a simple, low-brow job that Colleen Mathis was getting the work done while sitting in the back of a cab on the way to make the delivery.
Information, it was her bread and butter. Helping small businesses with computer safety paid peanuts in comparison with what she made providing passwords, door codes, passkeys, and private information to… well, the mob. Basically, the mob, anyway. What they usually came to her for were the bank accounts of people that owed them money. This time she was delivering the entry code for a luxury Highrise on South Avenue. Any flunky could have pulled it off, so she wasn’t sure why she had been the one called in, or what they had offered her 20K for it. Not that she was going to turn down twenty-thousand dollars anyway.
The taxi slowed and pulled over, and Colleen leaned forward to hand over a couple of twenties. She told the driver to wait for her before she hopped out. The steel, glass, and concrete city was as noisy as it ever was. People shouted, car horns blared, and life bustled with a teaming rhythm that made her blood sing. Coly was cautious by nature, she didn’t take risks that were outside her control, she didn’t take jobs that were beyond her abilities, and she didn’t play stupid games. But, she loved the rush and whirl of big cities. Dreams were made and destroyed every day, people found ruin and fortune in every heartbeat, and while she was not a gambler herself, she enjoyed living and working among those that were.
That was all her clients were to her. They gambled, she helped them cheat for a price, that was the grand extent of her involvement. Not that any of her friends or family would see it that way if they knew how she made her money. The last digits to the code fell into place like winning numbers of a slot machine just as she walked up to the front desk.
“Hey Coly,” the blonde behind the counter greeted her with a friendly smile.
“Hiya Jenny,” she smiled back. With one hand she pushed her wild mane of copper back away from her face while she slid her tablet to the other woman for a quick security check. “Highrise delivery. That’s the master access code, it should get them in the building as well as anywhere they want to go inside.”
“Trying for a tip, are we?” the other woman teased as she passed Coly a little, yellow door card. Jennifer was the daughter of some boss upstairs, and she could drink Colleen under the table.
“No,” she fussed as the blonde, pulling a face to look insulted, “do I look like I need a tip?”
“Always,” Jenny teased as she slid the tablet back across the desk. Colleen just laughed as she tucked the tablet into her purse and bent over the desk. “Your account will be updated no later than 4pm tomorrow. Jack will take receipt, as usual.”
“As usual,” Coly was going to ask Jenny out again. They’d get a bite to eat, have a drink, probably end up back as Jenny’s place, and Coly would leave before the blonde woke up. It was a thing they just did every now and then. The problem was, an alarm started to beep on Jenny’s desk. The persistent sound made the rest of the atrium seem suddenly far too quiet. Jenny was immediately all business, snatching up a phone and barking orders. When she noticed Coly still standing there, she paused long enough shew the redhead away. Whatever it was, she assumed they had it under control if it was just a silent alarm for the rest of the building.
It wasn’t the first time there had been some kind of incident, and Colleen tried not to think about it. Whatever it was, it was their problem, not hers. She was there to deliver on her contract and get the hell out of dodge. The elevator required the yellow card to be swiped to let her in. She was supposed to get off on the fourth floor. She’d take a left, head down the hall to the third door on the right. Jack would be waiting, most likely bent over his computer playing some FPS or another. She’d deliver, he’d pay, she’d leave.
That was not what happened.
What happened was that the elevator stopped on the third floor and opened to a woman with a gun, and a man at her feet, and a lot of blood.
Colleen wasn’t a screamer or a fainter. She never really had been. But, in that instant, she had the strange thought that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.
Her finger tips danced across the screen of her ultraslim tablet. The top quarter of the screen showed a nearly complete 7 digit code, while the rest was a game of candy crush. The network security for the Highrise they wanted access to was so lax that hacking it was little more than a plug-and-play job. Upload a program, watch it work, just make sure no one notices until it’s too late and no more effort was really needed. It was such a simple, low-brow job that Colleen Mathis was getting the work done while sitting in the back of a cab on the way to make the delivery.
Information, it was her bread and butter. Helping small businesses with computer safety paid peanuts in comparison with what she made providing passwords, door codes, passkeys, and private information to… well, the mob. Basically, the mob, anyway. What they usually came to her for were the bank accounts of people that owed them money. This time she was delivering the entry code for a luxury Highrise on South Avenue. Any flunky could have pulled it off, so she wasn’t sure why she had been the one called in, or what they had offered her 20K for it. Not that she was going to turn down twenty-thousand dollars anyway.
The taxi slowed and pulled over, and Colleen leaned forward to hand over a couple of twenties. She told the driver to wait for her before she hopped out. The steel, glass, and concrete city was as noisy as it ever was. People shouted, car horns blared, and life bustled with a teaming rhythm that made her blood sing. Coly was cautious by nature, she didn’t take risks that were outside her control, she didn’t take jobs that were beyond her abilities, and she didn’t play stupid games. But, she loved the rush and whirl of big cities. Dreams were made and destroyed every day, people found ruin and fortune in every heartbeat, and while she was not a gambler herself, she enjoyed living and working among those that were.
That was all her clients were to her. They gambled, she helped them cheat for a price, that was the grand extent of her involvement. Not that any of her friends or family would see it that way if they knew how she made her money. The last digits to the code fell into place like winning numbers of a slot machine just as she walked up to the front desk.
“Hey Coly,” the blonde behind the counter greeted her with a friendly smile.
“Hiya Jenny,” she smiled back. With one hand she pushed her wild mane of copper back away from her face while she slid her tablet to the other woman for a quick security check. “Highrise delivery. That’s the master access code, it should get them in the building as well as anywhere they want to go inside.”
“Trying for a tip, are we?” the other woman teased as she passed Coly a little, yellow door card. Jennifer was the daughter of some boss upstairs, and she could drink Colleen under the table.
“No,” she fussed as the blonde, pulling a face to look insulted, “do I look like I need a tip?”
“Always,” Jenny teased as she slid the tablet back across the desk. Colleen just laughed as she tucked the tablet into her purse and bent over the desk. “Your account will be updated no later than 4pm tomorrow. Jack will take receipt, as usual.”
“As usual,” Coly was going to ask Jenny out again. They’d get a bite to eat, have a drink, probably end up back as Jenny’s place, and Coly would leave before the blonde woke up. It was a thing they just did every now and then. The problem was, an alarm started to beep on Jenny’s desk. The persistent sound made the rest of the atrium seem suddenly far too quiet. Jenny was immediately all business, snatching up a phone and barking orders. When she noticed Coly still standing there, she paused long enough shew the redhead away. Whatever it was, she assumed they had it under control if it was just a silent alarm for the rest of the building.
It wasn’t the first time there had been some kind of incident, and Colleen tried not to think about it. Whatever it was, it was their problem, not hers. She was there to deliver on her contract and get the hell out of dodge. The elevator required the yellow card to be swiped to let her in. She was supposed to get off on the fourth floor. She’d take a left, head down the hall to the third door on the right. Jack would be waiting, most likely bent over his computer playing some FPS or another. She’d deliver, he’d pay, she’d leave.
That was not what happened.
What happened was that the elevator stopped on the third floor and opened to a woman with a gun, and a man at her feet, and a lot of blood.
Colleen wasn’t a screamer or a fainter. She never really had been. But, in that instant, she had the strange thought that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.