Excerpt
Kananga, Congo
Sked cursed at the steel door. It cut the corridor off from the rest of the finance center. Just around the bend, the big door on the other side would be just as tightly sealed. Any smaller maintenance passages would be dead, too.
Lockdown.
Finding Lillian again was going to be a bitch. He blinked a couple of times to get his retinal implants to respond. Schematics and a map. Wi-Fi wasn't running, and the center was shielded against transmissions from outside, so there was no chance to contact her.
He'd have to do this the hard way… on foot.
First things first. Being locked in a corridor full of food sellers wasn't going to help him, but brute forcing a blast door wasn't the way to go about it. Good way to get noticed.
Pausing only to buy a VatVeg burrito he was pretty sure he was going to regret later, he made his way toward the corridor marked on his map. A hooker and her client were just emerging—a good sign; the girls always knew the spots no one was likely to wander into.
The door at the end of the tunnel was steel, too. If they ever had a fire in one of these places during a lockdown, they'd be able to sell barbecued business people at wholesale prices.
Easy does it. The trick was to get the door open without tripping every alarm in the complex.
One thing worked in his favor—no one was looking for him. Lockdown was meant to stop armed groups from moving around, not individuals with… certain skills.
He pulled out his laptop, jacked a cable into the electronic lock, and then put the laptop back in the pack. If anyone stumbled over him, it would look like he was just resting… unless someone spotted the wire. Then he was screwed.
The lockpicking program ran from his implants, and when the assessment came up, Sked laughed out loud. Was it really that basic? He double checked for traps, Trojan horses, and hidden surveillance, but no. Then he checked the position of security cameras. Nothing trained on that door. This wasn't a sensitive part of the installation.
"Open Sesame."
He popped through, and then strolled in the correct direction, trying to look like he belonged, and like he was as confused as everyone else by the fact that he couldn't get through the doors. His implants warned him when he came into a camera field so he could look away just as the camera saw him. An unfortunate coincidence for whoever was watching.
Two more doors presented little difficulty, and he was standing in the lobby of one of the residential zones.
"Nice," he said to himself. "Lillian appears to be doing well for herself."
Eschewing the lift, he hiked to her door, and was about to lean into it when he remembered his manners. They didn't get much use in his line of work but, once upon a time, he'd been at school in Singapore, where manners were drummed into youngsters at a tender age. Doorbell, then.
"Hello."
"Go away."
She slammed the door. He rang again.
"What?"
"We need to talk."
"Are you trying to blow my cover?"
"I don't think anyone within a thousand miles cares about your cover. Not anymore."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's started."