She swung her legs back up and let her upper body hang through the opening. She gazed at the entrance, watching it very carefully, ready to withdraw at a moment’s notice.
If she had triggered a silent alarm, robots would come bounding through that door any moment now. Any moment.
But none came.
Still she waited.
After two full minutes passed, she concluded that DragonHunter had successfully disabled the motion sensors. She imagining the hacker scolding her: “Come on Warden, how could you doubt my prowess?”
She swung her legs down and lowered herself inside, dropping to the table. She landed softly on the glass.
She leaped onto the carpeted floor next to the table and made her way toward the door at a crouch.
She placed one of the CommNixers on the door and then tried the handle. Locked.
She crushed that handle in her fingers, and then opened the door.
The walkway beyond would have more cameras of course, but she had to trust that DragonHunter had them handled. She peered past the door, confirming that there were no patrols of any kind out there, then headed out.
She hugged the wall, staying away from the walkway railing, which overlooked the main concourse of the building. Overhead, the interior walls sloped upward to an apex, matching the exterior shape of the pyramid. Rectangular frames interrupted that slope at intervals, marking the walkways of subsequent levels.
Rhea reached a stairwell, placed a CommNixer, and opened the door without issue. She continued down three flights to the basement. She ignored the camera domes that watched her from the top of each flight.
At the bottom she placed another CommNixer, but the door was locked, so she had to crush the handle once more.
She opened the door and peered past; after confirming that the way was clear, she emerged. She replaced the broken pieces, carefully attaching the two sides. The handles drooped slightly, seemingly ready to fall apart at any moment; she waited, ready to catch the pieces, but they remained in place.
She closed the door slowly, being careful not to knock the broken handles loose, and then stepped back after shutting it to examine her handiwork. She nodded to herself. Even though the handle drooped, it would pass a cursory inspection.
She continued toward her destination. The blank overhead map filled out as she explored the hallway.
She passed several doors, some of which were probably storage closets. As she approached a bend, she heard the clang of metal feet coming from beyond.
A patrol.
She quickly retreated. None of the doors had handles; she tried shoving them anyway, but they didn’t give.
Finally, she reached a door with a handle. It was locked. She placed a CommNixer, then broke off the handle and opened the door.
It was a storage closet. She entered, then partially closed the door behind her. She replaced the broken handle, holding it in place from the opposite side; from the front, it looked completely intact.
She attached another CommNixer to the back of the door, retrieved the disk she’d attached to the front, then shut the door.
She waited, listening. As that clanging grew in volume, she thought of the broken stairwell handle. She had told herself it would pass a cursory inspection, but as she thought of how much it drooped, she was no longer quite so sure.
She tightened her grip on the handle just in front of her; the clanging peaked in volume as the patrolling robots passed the storage closet, and then the noise receded once more. She waited several moments, with those footfalls sounding steadily, though more softly, with each passing moment… if the robots had spotted the broken stairwell handle, she would have expected the footfalls to have paused by now. But they did not.
The footsteps continued fading in volume until she could no longer hear them.
She waited another minute. She was somewhat worried that it was a ruse, and that the robots had left one of their number behind to deal with her while the others advanced merely to set her at ease.
She tentatively opened the closet a crack. There was no one there.
Of course there wasn’t. Robots didn’t plan their attacks like that. If they had discovered her, they would have opened the door straightaway.
You need to relax. Stop overthinking. You can do this.
She left the closet. Because of the way the handle had cracked, its pieces wouldn’t balance on the door by themselves, so she tossed the broken parts inside and simply shut the door.
She continued forward. When she reached the bend, she peered past, and confirmed that no robots were waiting. She hurried underneath the camera dome in the ceiling and tried not to imagine what would happen to her if DragonHunter failed to hack any of the devices.
She reached a T intersection at the end of the hallway. Directly above that intersection was the access point: a small, square-shaped object attached to the ceiling.
She retrieved the dongle from her pocket, carefully peered past both branches of the T intersection, and then stepped underneath the access point. She attached the male part of the dongle to the female connector and watched as blue lights began to flash on the tip. She waited several moments, and when the device turned green, she removed it.
The hijacking software was installed. Assuming it worked, at that very moment DragonHunter would be downloading the unique IDs of everyone who had interfaced with the access point over the last few days, along with their timestamps.
She retrieved the wireless security camera she had stowed away in one of her pockets and attached it to the ceiling next to
