“Great,” Rhea said. “I can appreciate that it was a lot of work. But please, where did Veil connect from?”
“The IP matches up to a wireless access point in the parliament area,” DragonHunter said. “Specifically, the lower floors of city hall.”
“Can you send me the location on the map?” she said.
“Well, I suppose,” DragonHunter said. “But only because you’re the Warden.”
She received a share request and bounced it off Horatio.
Check this for viruses, please, she sent the robot over a private mental channel. Last thing she needed was some hacker messing with her remote interface.
Happy to be the guinea pig, Horatio replied. A moment later: Seems safe. Transmitting the coordinates your way.
She received them, and forwarded the data on to Will, Miles and Brinks.
She applied the coordinates to her overhead map, which recentered on the Aradne parliament compound. Most of the map regions in that area contained only outlines of the building exteriors, since the blueprints weren’t available to the public. And while the interior of the city hall was partially mapped, the area where the flashing icon appeared was completely blank. Because of the position, she knew it was in some sort of basement.
“What’s the range of this access point?” she asked.
“To use it, Veil, or his agent, would have to have been within two hundred meters,” DragonHunter said.
Rhea tapped her chin. “If I get close enough to whoever contacted you, will you be able to identify them?”
“I’d have to hack the access point first,” DragonHunter said. “And find out the unique ID of whoever was using it at the time Veil called me. But yes.”
She tapped her lips. “Wouldn’t you also be able to run a reverse lookup on that ID against the public profile database?”
“Yes,” DragonHunter replied. “Assuming Veil, or his agent, actually has a public profile.”
“Probably not, huh?” she said. “But we have to try. How long would it take to hack the access point, so we could get that unique ID?”
“I’ll need physical access, unfortunately,” DragonHunter explained.
Rhea nodded. “Could you prepare a dongle of some kind, so someone else could deliver your hacking payload?”
DragonHunter pursed his lips. “Actually, yeah.”
“All right then,” Rhea said. “When you have this dongle ready, give it to me.” She glanced at Will and Horatio.
“You’re not really planning what I think you’re planning…” Will said.
She smiled sweetly. “I believe so. I’m going to personally delivery the payload.”
“You can’t,” Will said.
“It’s only a matter of time before Veil strikes again,” Rhea told her closest friend. “I say we take the battle to Veil. Hit first, while we still can.”
“We still don’t know who posted your original bounty,” Will said.
“No,” Rhea agreed. “But I’m hoping we’ll find that out from Veil. I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
“That didn’t work so well when you interrogated the last assassin,” Will commented.
“Let’s just say, I wasn’t in the proper mood.” Her body had taken a terrible beating, and Chuck had just died. No, she hadn’t been in the mood at all.
“Even if you get Veil’s ID, it’s very doubtful he has a public profile,” Will said.
“But at least we’ll have the ID,” Rhea said. “We can leave behind a security camera near the access point. Trigger it to activate when someone with that ID walks by.”
“You’ll never get inside city hall,” Will pressed. “Let alone the parliament area. The compound is too well guarded.”
She glanced at DragonHunter. “I have the greatest hacker of all time at my side to help me. Don’t I?”
DragonHunter shivered with either fear, or excitement. Rhea couldn’t tell which. Maybe both.
“You have my help,” DragonHunter agreed. A long strand of spittle erupted from his lips as he spoke; it formed a trembling, sickly white string that reached to his bearded chin.
She returned her gaze to Will. “See? What could go wrong?”
18
The next day, Rhea partook in the daily riot at the main gates. Her comm node was disabled, so that her ID and public profile weren’t readable, and she wore her hood low. This allowed her to conceal her identity not just from the Aradne security forces, but from her fellow slum residents.
DragonHunter operated from a secure location nearby. However, Will and Horatio were among the rioters, as were several of her Wardenites. They helped drive the crowd into a seething frenzy, so that when DragonHunter finally hacked the gate controls and opened the sliding metal door, the rioters were more than ready to rush the waiting robots.
Except Aradne security had mechs waiting this time, instead of the previous chain of combat robots.
But the lead rioters didn’t even hesitate when they saw the mechanical monstrosities. The crowd simply rushed straight at the mechs, which promptly began scooping people up for arrest. But there were too many rioters, and several members began to slip past.
Rhea was one of them. She squeezed between the legs of a mech. It tried to swat her backward, as its hands already carried three other rioters; she was unarmed, like everyone else, and the only option she had was to dodge that slap. She dove forward and rolled across the pavement; when she got up, she joined the other rioters on the other side who sprinted into Aradne.
The crowd fanned out, and robots began to arrest those individuals who were on the outer extremities.
“Muster!” Will said through a loudspeaker. “They can’t arrest us if we stick together and protest peacefully! To me!”
Those who ignored Will were promptly arrested; a man and a woman swung bats into the windows of a nearby building, and a mech scooped them up by the scruffs of the necks and hauled them away.
Will waited as the crowd gathered to him, then
