Bound Together Read online

  The bed hadn't been made up in days and the sheets and coverlet were completely tangled together. I made a half-assed effort to cover my naked body with the blankets, set my phone down on the inductive charging mat on my nightstand, and passed out almost immediately.

  the black

  My phone rang.

  I blinked, trying to clear my vision as I sat up in bed. My phone kept ringing, insistently. The clock on the nightstand informed me that it was a quarter after one o'clock. I'd been asleep for about five hours.

  Ignoring the ringing phone I collected myself and tried to clear my head a bit. I could tell from the caller ID on the screen that it was my boss. There were only a few possibilities I could imagine that would prompt him to call me so late and on one of my days off. None of them were especially pleasant to think of.

  Steeling myself for the inevitable shitstorm, I picked up the phone and accepted the call, holding the device to my ear. His voice, brusque and impatient, came over the line with little interference.

  “We've got a big problem. I need you down here at the office, ASAP.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “You wouldn't be calling me after one AM unless something was either exploding or on fire, or both.”

  His response, as expected, was annoyed. “Can the sarcasm, Miss Ashley. There's been a breach. Someone's being fucking cute—and it has to be someone with clearance. No other possibility.”

  That got my attention, the heavy shroud of sleepiness dropping away and bringing me into full awareness. “Elaborate on 'fucking cute,' please.”

  “The level-four security doors aren't responding to any access cards or codes. Just get your ass down here and I'll tell you more.”

  The call was disconnected. I glared at the phone for a few moments, staring at the call log as if I could transmit my negative thoughts over the wireless connection to strike my annoying supervisor directly in the face. Unfortunately, this proved impossible, so I stood up and padded to the bathroom.

  There wasn't any time to get a shower. I had no choice but to throw on whatever and head down to the facility. As the data security officer at my place of employment, the inglorious task of responding to late-night systems emergencies fell upon my rather sore and tired shoulders.

  I twisted the knobs on my bathroom faucet and washed my face, staring at the reflection in the mirror. I was not looking especially fetching right now, what with the obvious dark circles under my usually clear and sharp light brown eyes. They weren't so clear or sharp at one in the morning after being jolted awake.

  My hair, usually something I took a great deal of pride in, was pretty much a wreck, so I didn't bother trying to do anything with it other than pull it back into a messy brown ponytail. It would have to do. I doubted my intolerable boss would give any number of fucks so long as I was present, alert and ready to deal with whomever was trying to break into our systems.

  After cleaning up and throwing some clothes on, I felt a bit better, a little more in control. Quickly I gathered the implements of my position. My phone, my ID, my security officer jacket, which was infinitely less cool than my favorite leather jacket, and the thing I least liked carrying, my automatic. All security officers were required to keep and maintain a weapon as part of our job, but the gun was a massive headache to deal with.

  Not because I didn't know how to use it—I'm not an idiot. I take it to the range every two weeks for practice because it's in my contract; if I want to keep my job, I don't have much choice. That wasn't the problem. The problem was more that carrying the thing concealed was a really gigantic pain in the ass, especially since the permit I held was heavily conditional. Traffic stops by the local police were not fun, and just to avoid problems I was a bit of a defensive driver.

  The pistol I carried was a compact automatic, chambered in nine-millimeter, twelve-plus-one capacity. I drew the weapon from its padded black holster and pulled back the slide, checking the chamber. There was a round already locked and ready to go, the adaptive safety was good and I had no more time to be screwing around else the esteemed Director Reynolds would be calling me again.

  I pulled my jacket on and walked out the front door, lingering just long enough to hear the click as the auto-lock engaged. It was cold out; I could see my breath emerge from between my lips in faint white clouds. Reaching into the pocket of my jacket, I pulled out my battered old lighter and a cigarette. I lit the smoke and inhaled deeply as I made my way down the four flights of stairs and into the parking lot.

  My car wasn't the nicest thing in the world, but as I'd so eloquently put it to So-yi earlier: it was a car and the wheels rolled. More specifically, it was a Chinese-manufactured, 2028 make, two-door ethanol hybrid that certainly didn't look fifteen years old. The paint job was mostly immaculate, but I knew I would have to buy a new car soon enough. So-yi's revelation that ethanol taxes were going up was no surprise. The government sure liked to “encourage” people to switch to fuel cell cars with taxes.

  I pulled the door open and dropped into the driver's seat, closed the door and started up the engine. With a soft whirr, the electric drive motors powered on. The battery capacity display told me I didn't have much; sure enough, the combustion engine popped to life.

  As I pulled out of my apartment complex's parking lot and into traffic, I thought about money again. It's something I think about often, of course—doesn't everyone? A late-night call to deal with a crisis situation definitely had me thinking about my pathetic salary.

  Traffic was light after one o'clock and it still wasn't snowing yet. Be grateful for small favors, I guess. I mashed on the accelerator and sent the car into the tiniest bit of a controlled slide as I changed lanes and merged onto the freeway.

  The office I worked for, known to most as the Records & Licensing Agency branch office was at the edge of downtown Seattle. Strictly speaking I was a federal employee, but there really wasn't much of a difference between federal and state anymore, not since the Federated States Amendment was passed in 2022.

  More about my job: the Records & Licensing Agency. It dealt with... records... and... licenses. I mean, really, this isn't all that complicated. At least, that's what it says on the label, anyway. Outside of keeping track of paperwork for just about anything under the sun, the agency's primary and less-obvious function is to keep tabs on the wealthy elite.

  Powerful dynasties were nothing new in the American political and economic sphere, of course, but after the last two major recessions—one that started in 2008 and a much worse one that started in 2019—several branches of the federal government decided to get serious about keeping an eye on those individual families who held enough financial and political clout to buy whole nations lock, stock and barrel.

  It seemed prudent, especially after the bastards and their political toadies nearly caused the entire western world to slide back into something resembling the 1920s. So the government formed the Records & Licensing Agency, ostensibly to reduce government waste by consolidating a lot of paper-pushing and database bullshit into a single agency with only a single source of funding, keeping the agency's true mission a secret.

  The agency office wasn't a particularly big or imposing building. I suppose that made sense as we tried to present as boring a face as possible to the rest of the world while we did the dirty work. Well, I didn't actually do the dirty work; I'm just a security girl. It's my job to make sure the data we collect didn't end up in the wrong hands. It was usually a dull and tedious job that was occasionally punctuated by short bursts of excitement when the rare electronic intrusion actually happened.

  I had an uneasy feeling tonight would be different. I parked my car in my designated parking spot—one of the very few perks I do get as the top cop on campus—and stepped out of the car. It felt even colder here than it did outside my apartment. I lit another cigarette.

  “Karin, get your ass inside!”

  I shrugged and walked through the sliding door to enter the building, ignoring the bright and obv
ious “NO SMOKING” signs plastered across the doors. It was one in the morning; who the fuck cared? Clearly, Director Reynolds was worried enough about the intrusion to let my breach of office etiquette go unpunished. Things must've been worse than I thought. I puffed away at the smoke as I followed the boss through the lobby and into the nexus of corridors that led to different parts of the facility.

  “What gives, boss?”

  “See for yourself,” he snapped and waved his access card in front of the door marked with a large red “4.” The auto-lock let out a low chastising beep and flashed red three times, which was not at all normal.

  “That means it failed to read the card,” I told him. I unclipped my own pass from my jacket and brushed it across the lock's NFC reader. The same beep and triple-flash of red was my only reward.

  “No shit. All the level four and lower security doors are returning read errors.”

  I considered the locked security door for a few moments. “All of them? I know there's nothing wrong with either of our cards. I can reset them from my office, but...”

  “Just use the override key,” Reynolds said.

  “Are you sure that's wise with a hacker playing around in our network?” I gave my supervisor a dubious look. “If I reset the doors, you know I'll have to leave them all open until we can regain control of the system and make sure the attackers can't get back in.”

  My boss sent me a glare that suggested I was getting on his nerves. “Don't patronize me, Karin. I know what it means. Just do it; if we can't get to the servers, we're not going to be able to pull the drives before they steal anything valuable.”

  “I really don't think this is wise—”

  “It's an electronic break-in,” Reynolds growled. “The doors being locked or unlocked isn't going to make any difference; they're already in the system. Just do it and fast, before they take something that gets both our asses fired.”

  I shrugged. There wasn't much else I could do if he was going to be like that. I slid a panel on the auto-lock aside, revealing a keypad. The security override code would open any door I used it on. Once I got to my office, I could enter it system-wide through the hardlink and the intruders wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

  The door lock beeped twice and the light went out. Under ordinary circumstances, a green light would have flashed, but the override forced the lock into the open position and then cut the power to the mechanism. I pushed the door open and strode into the corridor that would take me to my own office.

  The auto-lock's indicator glowed amber. That meant that whomever broke into the system only managed to get access to level four security; my office was on the level five system. I tapped my ID against the panel and stepped into my office.

  “I'll let you do your thing,” Reynolds muttered. “I'm going to head back to the lobby and coordinate with headquarters. Keep me updated.”

  I didn't bother to respond, instead closing the door behind me and dropping into my desk chair. I unlocked the workstation and all three monitors went on, displaying several warning dialog boxes helpfully informing me that the system had been compromised externally. I tossed my spent cigarette butt into the trash and sat down at the desk. After taking a few moments to read the alert messages I opened up a terminal window and started tapping commands into the system, bringing up the access logs.

  My boss was right about one thing; someone had used privileged clearance to gain level one access to the system remotely. From there it appeared they'd uploaded some sort of virus into the system that not only gave them backdoor access all the way up to level four, but also scrambled the logs to the point where I couldn't figure out who the original clearance belonged to.

  It was my job to oversee the network security systems, investigate breaches both electronic and physical and make sure the regular authorities were able to arrest the perpetrators. The fact that they'd managed to get this far meant that one of my security people either got careless or was in on the whole thing. It was my responsibility, my failure and my boss could have nailed my ass to the wall, but he didn't. Yet.

  I rubbed my tired eyes and tried not to think about the righteous dressing-down I'd get once we were out of the woods. After a few minutes I'd managed to clear away much of the garbage left behind by the virus, but I still couldn't figure out who the original clearance belonged to. I shrugged and entered the security override into the hardlink. A moment later and the terminal informed me that all the levels one through four doors were opened and powered down, no longer under the control of the intruder.

  The next step was to physically pull the drives. If they weren't connected or powered on, it didn't matter how good the hacker was, they'd never be able to access the data. I stood up and opened the door to my office and took a right, heading down through another level four security door into the main data vault.

  Rows upon rows of archival-grade hard disk drives filled dozens of modular racks that all connected via high-speed data cables to the database servers. This was the heart of the Records & Licensing Agency, but these weren't the drives I was actually interested in. This type of intrusion had less than nothing to do with mundane records or licenses.

  I passed through the rows of storage racks and stopped beside a section of suspiciously bare wall. I placed my ID against a seemingly random spot on the wall and waited as a section recessed and slid away, revealing two much smaller storage racks. These were considerably more advanced than the others. All of them contained encrypted solid-state storage units, price tag somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand each. A black metal handle protruded from one of the rack-mount slots; I grabbed it and pulled, revealing a small folding display and keyboard assembly.

  “Karin Ashley, Security, entering authorization code now,” I recited aloud. The system was locked with a voice-print as an added layer of security. A green indicator flashed on the screen and I started typing quickly, entering the root password into the keyboard as carefully as I could. If I didn't do this exactly right the system would send a pulse through the drives with enough voltage to fry them and probably set me on fire, too.

  Considering that I had no desire to be on fire, I made sure I followed procedure exactly. Data scrolled across the terminal window, informing me that the system was open and I could retract the storage media safely.

  Each drive was individually connected and I had to remove them individually. Well, “remove” is overstating it a bit; I wasn't actually going to take them out of the racks. One by one I slid the drives away from the backplane, disconnecting them from their power source as well as their connection to the data server.

  The whole process took almost five minutes. As I pulled the last drive out of seventy, the lights in the room flickered. I froze in place, a chill running down my spine. That should never happen. This building had its own generator, but beside that, the data vault had several redundant power supplies, including a fusion battery that could keep the entire system up for two weeks without any external power whatsoever.

  Flickering lights were not normal.

  I stepped away from the hidden alcove. There were no external controls to close the wall panel, but the biometric scanners would realize I'd moved and the door should have closed on its own within ten seconds.

  The lights went out. The door did not close.

  Fuck.

  I drew my pistol from the holster at the small of my back and tapped a button on the side. An integrated LED flashlight underneath the barrel and slide powered on and cast a bright beam, illuminating the room. The power was not completely out; indicator lights glowed on the storage racks all around me.

  I strained to listen, trying to overhear anything—voices I didn't recognize, the sounds of a struggle, anything that would let me know if the intrusion was more than just a hacking attempt. But I couldn't hear anything except the humming of hundreds of small fans, keeping the drives cool.

  “It makes sense, though,” I murmured to myself. My heart was thudding wildly in
my chest. I kept my pistol in a ready grip, forward, my finger against the guard, fighting hard to maintain good trigger discipline. The last thing I wanted to do was get into a firefight with one of my own coworkers.

  The near silence was unnerving, but the total lack of activity was worse. Reynolds should have been on the phone with all sorts of other agencies. My own security people and Secret Service suits should have been swarming all over the place, but the corridors were empty and dark.

  I passed by my office, noting the auto-lock was still active. I hesitated by the door for a moment and pulled out my phone. The sane thing to do would be to go inside my office, seal the door and call for backup. Unfortunately, circumstances didn't want me to do the sane thing because I had absolutely no signal.

  It couldn't possibly have been a coincidence. The electronic break-in was a prelude to an actual, physical break-in, one performed by professionals. I recalled the warning I gave my boss about the doors—

  Shit! The fucking doors! That's what they wanted in the first place!

  Acutely aware that my chances of being shot to death had exponentially increased, I lifted my pistol and flipped off the safety. The click sounded deafening in the dark, silent corridor. I was trembling, my heart beating like a crazy runaway freight train, but I was damn well determined not to go out without a fight. I sidled up against the level four security door leading back into the nexus near the lobby and peered through the plate-glass window.

  The lobby was dark, but the parking lot floodlights were bright enough to illuminate the interior well enough. My eyes widened and I felt my body go so cold and slack I almost dropped my gun.

  Blood was everywhere. Dark slashes of blood glistened wetly on the walls. Pooled on the floor, mingled with crushed and broken glass. The sliding double-doors that led into the building were made of high-impact bullet-resistant glass, but someone or something had shattered it. Near the entrance was a deep pile of whitish-gray ash, but I couldn't see any indication that there was a fire anywhere. More of it was scattered in smaller piles near the larger one.