Gomez got out and went to the door.
“What’s going on? I can’t see through these shelves,” Two-Step said.
“Two-Step, none of us can see back here,” Sandy said.
“He’s at the door talking,” Kat said. “He’s giving the guy the flash drive. The guy went back in and shut the door.”
Jacob leaned toward the front to get a better view. Gomez was standing at the door, looking at the neighborhood.
“The guy opened the door,” Kat said. “There’s our signal. Let’s go do this.”
The inside of the house was a hacker’s dream. Servers and decks took up much of the space, and there was no furniture except chairs at work stations and a table without chairs in the kitchen. Signal scramblers ran along the walls, near the ceiling of each room, making it a bubble no Wi-Fi could get in or out of. There were a few people bent over workstations, oblivious to the others roaming around.
“I’ll show you where you can work,” the man who let them in said, “but first you’ll have to check all of the gear with me, and you’ll have to use our equipment. You understand I’m sure. Any cybernetics that record or connect to the net?”
“My left eye,” Gomez said.
“What’s it designed for?”
“Zoom, night vision, heat, and recording when I want. I’ll leave that function off and let you check the log when we’re done.”
“That’s fine. Not like I can take it anyway? Anyone else? Good. Let me get a box for your gear.”
He came back with a box, and everyone put in their gear. He closed the box and locked it with an electronic lock and gave the key to Gomez.
“You can take the main bedroom,” he said, pointing upstairs. “It’s at the end of the hall past the bathroom. My name is Monk, and if you need anything, let me know. You can call for me or send someone to get me.”
“Thanks,” Gomez said.
“How are we going to get on the net with all of these scramblers?” Two-Step asked.
Gomez gave Two-Step a look that told him to be quiet.
“No, that’s cool. I would want to know too,” Monk said. “Always know the highway you’re driving on. We have a fiber cable running under the street to the loan place. Nothing in there but a shit-ton of tech. From there we piggyback on the cell tower. The building is so close to the tower, anything but a precisely targeted scan will only show the cell tower’s connection to the net. There’s a small, dead-end router camouflaged on the roof so the house doesn’t show up as totally dark. That would be suspicious.”
“Thanks,” Two-Step said. He started to smile at Gomez. The look on Gomez’s face seemed to dare him to say something. Two-Step gave in and started upstairs.
The room was almost as cramped as the back of the van. Workstations lined the walls and a table in the center of the room held several more. An Italian made ergonomic gaming chair sat at each workstation.
“This setup sure beats that Tandy I rigged up,” Two-Step said. He sat down. “I’ve always wanted one of these chairs.”
Jacob took a seat and moved from side to side. “Built for comfort.”
“And for having your ass in it for a long time,” Sandy said.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long,” Xia said.
Everyone except Kat sat down at a station. She would watch over them as they were linked to the net. If anyone in the house came into the room while they were linked, Kat would handle them. She would also be the one to sever everyone’s link if they ran into trouble and needed to be pulled out, and she would be their communication network. The safe house supplied headsets with neuronet amplifiers sending a low-grade signal to everyone’s subdermal chip, allowing her to communicate with them, and them with her.
“Man, these guys think of everything,” Two-Step said as he picked up one of the headsets and scanned the tattoo on his forearm. “These will take care of the murmurs.”
“The murmurs?” Xia asked.
“You know, when you go deep in the link and can’t talk,” Two-Step said. “You sure you’ve done this before?”
“Yes,” Xia said as she scanned her tattoo. “I just haven’t heard it called that before.”
“What do you call it?”
“Not being able to hear someone when I’m linked in.”
“Everyone ready?” Jacob asked. He wanted to get this done.
“They’re all set,” Kat said.
“All right,” Jacob said, “when you get in, go to the server address. I want to make sure we’re all there before we start the attack. The notes the SRS gave us said this server AI has an aggressive defense system, so I don’t want anyone going at it alone.”
“What does an aggressive defense system do?” Two-Step asked.
“Some try to fry your brain while you’re linked,” Sandy said.
“Sorry I asked.”
“Don’t worry,” Kat said, “that’s why I’m here.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Jacob said. “Link on Kat’s signal.”
“Go,” Kat said.
It was a freeing sensation. Weightless. Bodiless. Floating in code and data. Floating in the limitless expanse of the net. Listing to the music of the net, like the music of the spheres. Jacob never got tired of it.
He thought the server address and was transported, riding the data stream. When he stopped, the AI defense filled his vision, a huge structure of code with data streams filtering in and out.
“Everyone good to go?” he asked.
Everyone responded they were.
“That’s an impressive defense system,” Gomez said. “Stick with the plan?”
“Yes. Xia, piggyback on an incoming data stream. Two-Step, use the fake account and false IP address we created. Sandy and Gomez hit it with ping flood attacks. I’ll get the request to end services attack going.”
It was Gomez’s idea to rewrite the incoming data streams with a request to end services and issue a refund, but Jacob would be the one to execute it. The attack required the most speed coding, and Jacob
