He activated a schematic app, trying to find the right one in his saved files. If he had it. If it wasn’t too old. “How’s it coming?” Liz asked.
“Got a knife?”
“Will a multi-tool do?”
“Long as there’s a blade.” Olly took it and slipped the knife out. Carefully, he extracted the touchscreen module, exposing the connector. He took a capture of it, and compared it to the schematics. He handed her back the multi-tool. “Right, I’ve got to brute force it. That means I need to–”
“I know what it means, Olly. Can you do it?”
“I need more time.”
“Minute ten,” Liz said.
“It’s not going to be enough,” Olly hissed.
Liz sighed. “I could bust this lock in ten seconds with a bricked 5G handset and a bit of a sing-song if I wanted. If you can’t do the same, what good are you?”
Olly wanted to glare at her, but refrained. He focused on the lock. Once upon a time, a hacker would have needed something to attach to the connector, which didn’t care what it was attached to. These days, you could just connect the lock to an Optik, via a modified power adaptor. Luckily, he had one on him.
With a home-made predictor app, Olly could check around five hundred possible code combinations per minute. Another app sent a signal to the lock every fifteen seconds, resetting the failed attempt counter. A third redirected the alarm to his own display. Even so, he was still running out of time.
“Under a minute left,” Liz said. “Better hurry.”
“You’re not helping,” Olly snarled.
Liz chuckled softly. Olly bit back a curse. A moment later, his Optik gave a flash and there was an audible click as the door opened. Olly scrambled to his feet in relief. “Done.”
“Two minutes, ten seconds. Not bad.”
Olly detached his Optik, and replaced the module. “You know, normally it takes around ten minutes to pick a lock.” He pulled the door open. “A bit better than not bad.”
“Used to take thirty,” Liz said, stepping past him into the property room. “We had to take pictures, go away and build our own circuit board and counter, and then figure out a way to reboot the system so the alarm didn’t go off. Even then, it might still take an hour, depending on how fast you could crunch the possible code combinations.”
“If you knew that why did you give me two minutes?” Olly demanded.
“Like I said, it was a test. You passed. Good on you, mate. Now get in here and close the door before somebody sees you.”
Olly closed the door as quietly as possible. He froze when he spotted the security cameras. Liz noticed him tense and said, “Relax. Those are Blume cameras. Remember, anything on cTOS can’t see us – that includes those.”
He let out a slow breath. As he looked around, a thought occurred to him. “Used to take thirty, you said…”
“What about it?” Liz said, as she looked through the boxes on the shelves. Each was marked with a number sequence: date, case, assigned officer.
“You’ve done this sort of thing before?”
“I’ve done a lot of things. I was a black hat cracker when you were just a script kiddie. I put myself through university by busting open digital piggy banks and taking what I needed. Here – here it is.” She pulled a box off the shelf and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. It had clothes in it, wallet, keys – the detritus of Alex Dempsey’s life. She stared at it for a moment, and then shoved it against Olly’s chest. “The Optik’s in there. Get it out.”
Olly carefully opened the bag and fished the external unit out. It was an older model. He tossed the bag back into the box. “We need to get out of here. Get somewhere quiet, maybe get a cuppa while I figure out how to bust the encryption.”
“Easily done. We just walk out the same door we–”
The door opened. Two Albion operatives stood in the doorway. Neither was wearing a helmet, but both were armed. Their weapons were slung, not in their hands.
“Bugger,” Liz said.
“Who the fuck–” one of the newcomers began, his eyes widening.
Olly lifted his badge. “Press?”
Liz came at them from the side. Watching her, Olly wondered what they saw, if anything. Her elbow flashed up and out, connecting with one’s nose and sending him reeling back into the corridor. The second was turning even as she dropped into a crouch and scythed his legs out from under him with a kick. She looked at Olly. “Move it!”
Olly’s paralysis broke. He leapt over the fallen men and out the door, rebounding off the opposite wall of the corridor before righting himself and sprinting for the exit. Liz followed. Someone shouted behind them. Liz caught Olly by the back of his shirt and propelled him through the doors at the end of the corridor as the Albion goons gave chase.
“I thought you said they couldn’t see us,” he yelped.
“I know what I said,” she snarled, pushing him along. “Now run!”
We have a problem, Bagley whispered into Hannah’s ear.
Hannah was careful to control her expression. “What sort of problem?” she murmured. Before Bagley could answer, she heard shouts and then a crackle from the Albion radios. Faulkner grabbed his and spoke into it quickly. His expression turned thunderous. “What the fuck is going on in here?” he snarled, his gaze fixed accusingly on Jenks. “Someone’s attacked my men! What’s the meaning of this?”
They’re making for one of the other exits, Bagley said. But we need a distraction.
Hannah frowned and pushed towards Sarah. A babble rose up as the reporters shouted questions, police hurried towards the property room, and Faulkner barked orders. “We should go,” Hannah muttered, tugging on Sarah’s sleeve. She
