Encryption of the Heart (Love, Tech, & Magic #1)

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

The guard at the Police and Securities front desk stared at Olline with bleary, bloodshot eyes. The holo-tag on his faded uniform read “Brayden G”. He didn’t introduce himself though, and Olline thought it would be awkward if she greeted him by his first name. He barely gave her credentials—which she held out, not in the least embarrassed by the big grin on her badge photo—more than a cursory glance.

Rude.

He waved a security bot forward, its red laser scanning her from head to toe. The cylindrical robot beeped at her and flashed a green light before rolling back behind the front desk.

At least the bot said good morning. Or she thought it had. She was going to assume it did.

Olline smiled, her mouth opening to exchange the normal pleasantries you’re supposed to go through on the first day of a new job. Brayden gave a heavy exhale through his round nose, stopping her mid inhale. “You’re early. Your supervisor hasn’t clocked in yet. I’ll have to get an assistant drone to lead you down.”

Olline blinked at him, her body tensing at the imposition she was already causing on day one. “Yes, I guess I am,” she said with an uneasy giggle. “I didn’t think I needed to check in with anyone when I got here.” She shrugged, unsure what else to do.

Brayden frowned at her, then pointed down the long, shiny chrome corridor. “They have you stationed in sub-basement thirteen. Take the last elevator bay down this hall.” He taped on his wrist-communicator for a moment, then added, “The assistant drone will meet you at the elevator.”

Olline glanced down the empty hall, nodded to herself, and silently walked away. “Do me a favor,” Brayden said, voice harsh. She glanced at him over her shoulder, the blood draining from her cheeks. “Touch nothing until your lead checks in with you,” he warned. “You have a high security clearance, but you don’t need to be anywhere but sub-basement thirteen. Your supervisor is going to explain it to you, so don’t let me catch you wandering in the meantime. Clear?”

Olline swallowed the lump in her throat. She nodded vigorously, ignoring his grumbles about “fucking morning people” as she scurried away.

True to Brayden’s word, an assistant drone hovered by the elevator waiting. It was an automated bot, not equipped with a voice box or holo-screen. Its sole function being to lead people to where they were meant to go and ensure they didn’t break anything along the way. With how eerily quiet the building was, Olline kind of wished it was a droid. The robots weren’t real AIs, but it didn’t feel as awkward talking to a droid as it did a drone.

The bot trilled at her, then rotated toward the elevator, which it unlocked with a series of beeps. Following the little gun-metal grey drone, she touched the side of the elevator wall. The slight vibration of the hydraulics coming through the wall were the only sign the elevator was moving.

The doors opened silently, and the drone floated out first. Olline poked her head out into another empty hallway. The ceiling lights turned on as the drone flew down the room, illuminating the path she was to take.

The drone beeped at her, warning her to follow faster. She narrowed her eyes at the machine, letting a wisp of her power leak out and curl around its metal components. The bot didn’t care. But it was a pleasant reminder to Olline that a little assistant drone couldn’t boss her around. She scurried to where it waited for her in front of room two-hundred twenty-three, regardless. The only things she passed as she went were two security bots similar to the one at Brayden’s desk. Though she knew there were dozens of tiny, cloaked surveillance drones in the ceiling to monitor everyone’s comings and goings.

The drone, hovering by the door, put a spotlight on the scanner beneath the shiny gold “223”. Once she waved her credentials over the door, it slid up, granting entrance. No sooner had she cleared the threshold when the door closed behind her with a soft hiss, the soft puff of air tickling the back of her neck. The assistant drone hadn’t followed her. Perhaps it waited outside for when her supervisor arrived, making sure she didn’t wander off.

The room was filled with shadows, and the stacks of blinking servers loomed over her as she carefully tip-toed to the table in the center of the room. The servers were so jammed together that it would be easy to hide amongst the stacks. With the various lights blinking at inconsistent times, making the shadows move, it gave the impression that someone was lurking in the corner of her eye.

Taking a deep breath, Olline pushed away the paranoia and smiled into the shadowy room. This was her office. Just hers. She didn’t have to share space with a dozen other programmers where half were sick at any given time. That kind of freedom was worth the creepy office.

Feeling lighter than she had when she first entered, she pulled out her various holo-tablets, laptops, and folding keyboards, then connected her devices to the first of many server stacks. Brayden may have warned her not to do anything until her supervisor appeared, but surely that didn’t include setting up? Though she had never really understood why she needed a supervisor.

The job she was there to do, at least to start, wasn’t difficult. Just tedious.

The Police and Securities Department wanted to upgrade their old servers, ones that kept ancient evidence and cold cases, into a secure proprietary system. Her task first was to move the original files into a safe temporary digital storage device. Once she had a firm grasp of how big the new server needed to be, she would build the magitech hardware from scratch. Olline would use her earth caster abilities to craft something far smaller and more secure than what the Department currently had.

Until Olline reached the hardware crafting phase, she would have to work hard to suppress the curiosity that arose when her mind wasn’t occupied. She knew, despite her security clearance, that peeking at any of the evidence files would be a very unprofessional thing to do, even with no one currently snooping over her shoulder.

Once Olline powered on everything and set up her devices to her liking, she glanced at the time. She cringed. It was still a good hour ahead of when she was supposed to start. She considered familiarizing herself with the room, but the thought of casually strolling through the shadowy stacks sent a shiver down her spine.

Olline took a deep breath and sheepishly glanced around. “Well, no one’s here to tell me not to start. Maybe they’ll give me another bonus with the next contract if I finish early,” she said, perhaps trying a bit too hard to convince herself it was all right to bend the rules.

As always, she became instantly engrossed in the work when dealing with raw code and data files, sending smoky whispers of her magic through the copper wires to coax the software to move and duplicate into new locations in ways normal coders couldn’t do. It didn’t take long before she completely hunched over, with the collar of her white jacket in her mouth, idly chewing. Her eyes glazed over, completely oblivious to the room at large as her ethereal magical fingers did the navigating for her.

Olline had only been working for a few minutes when something interesting caught her eye. She blinked, her gaze coming back into focus, trying to catch up with what her magic had seen before her eyes could make sense of it.

“Huh,” she murmured, leaning forward until her nose nearly poked through the holo-projection in front of her. Her jacket collar, already saturated, fell from her open mouth. So far, all the evidence files had been available to her with her temporary administration account. But this file set was encrypted . Coded with at least seven layers of tangled encryption, its code was almost a living thing with its complexity.

Nothing else had this level of security around it. Stranger still, she was working in a pretty innocuous cold case area of the server to start with. More than just odd, it was curious.

Most earth casters had a level of empathy where they could sense others’ emotions, the natural flow and pull of someone’s feelings, and how it affected the world around them. Olline didn’t have that. Not truly. Sometimes she could get a feeling from others, but after, well, after, she didn’t trust those sensations anymore, especially when it came to men. What she had was a curiosity, a gut feeling, and while it did little for steering her away from shitty relationships, it often bubbled up when there was a technical challenge before her.

The feelings that tugged her down an inquisitive hole? Those she trusted.

Of course, she knew she shouldn’t mess with the file. Olline was alone though, and was still, technically, not on the clock for another ten minutes. She didn’t see the harm in making a door, in a sense, and having a teeny-tiny peek. Well, she did, but she ignored that and pretended this was research .

“Talent recognizes talent,” she said cheerily at the projection. “I just want to see and appreciate what your creator did, little file.”

Pulling up a prompt, she began writing a back door code that would tell this file that there was a system update to be installed. The temporary administrator account would allow her access into the file, despite the encryption.

Once the code was written for all viable systems housed within the folder, she took a deep breath, her finger hovering over the enter key. Olline gnawed on her lower lip for a moment, considering if her curiosity was worth the risk. A slow grin pulled her lips up.

She pushed the code. The system updated. Olline could now peek at the different layers of encryption this strange file held within.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she whispered, her eyes tracking the different lines, but unable to decipher exactly what it did, or what the different sub-folders were for. From what she could tell, they were external biomagitech chips of some kind which fed back to this server.

She couldn’t tell what the chips were supposed to do, or how many were currently active. And why was the file on this server? They weren’t attached to any cold case. They didn’t belong here. But here they were, all the same.

“So, so weird,” Olline mused.

Her finger hovered over the open command when the door to her office slid up and the assistant drone flew in. Hovering behind it was a larger drone with a holo-projection screen. Illuminated in the projection was a grumpy humani man. His bushy, blonde brows were pulled down over his small blue eyes. Thin, cracked lips were equally tugged down in a frown. Even with a soft filter on the projection, there was no hiding the dimpled scars on his tanned skin, nor his annoyance that Olline was already at work.

With quick, subtle movements, she closed the folder she had been snooping in. Olline licked her lips and glanced at the time as the man continued to glare at her from the projection. Now it was officially time to work.

“You’re Olline Tavos?” His voice was gravelly and full of irritation.

“Y-yes, sir,” she answered with a slight wince. Nervous sweat began collecting around her hairline. A tremor entered her hands she hoped he couldn’t see. Did he know what she had done? Had the assistant drone tattled on her?

No, impossible, she reminded herself. Those bots aren’t sophisticated enough to spy on me or my magic.

He grunted. “Karter Wayser,” he barked in return. “I’m your supervisor. But clearly,” he said, the projection drone hovered closer, moving around her to look at her holo-tablet. “You don’t need me.” His tone was flat, and she didn’t know if he was pissed or relieved.

The drone zoomed in front of her again, moving down to be eye level. “I’ll make this quick. I may be the one signing off on your paycheck, but Under Senator Straub was the one to hire you.” Olline opened her mouth to ask who that was. She didn’t recognize the name from her offer letter, but Karter had already moved on. “He’s the one who will decide if you get an extension. My job is to make sure you clock in and out, and you don’t take any evidentiary files from the building. That you only move the digital cases from this room to your designated space and build the required hardware. If you try to go into other departments’ files, I will know and there will be consequences. Understood?”

Bobbing her head in a nervous nod, she said, “Understood, Mr. Wayser.” He frowned at her, and Olline moved her hands away from the holo-tablet at last, rubbing her clammy palms on her jeans.

“Call me Karter. No need to be formal with me. You’re barely one of my employees.”

The way he said it sent a chill down her spine. Like the distinction mattered, but she couldn’t say why. Before she could ask though, the drone rotated and flew to the door. As Karter left, the speakers on the drone rotated to face her, and he said, “I won’t be here until I absolutely have to be. If you show up early again, fine. Just clock in so the IT teams know you’re here and in the system. You won’t get overtime, though.”

As if on cue, the door hissed open again and a short, bored looking humani woman waltzed in. The drone swiveled. “Good,” Karter said. “Perfect timing, Camirin.” The drone rotated back to Olline, who blinked in confusion as the woman, Camirin, tossed her dark brown ponytail behind her back and disappeared in the server stacks without a word. “Speaking of letting IT know you’re here,” Karter said. “Meet Camirin. She’s your point of contact if you need anything for the servers, or if passwords give you any issue. Be sure to bother her, not me.”

Olline whipped her head around to see what Camirin was doing, or talk to her more about the equipment. But Camirin apparently already finished what she came down to do. Her hazel eyes briefly glanced over Olline, before turning her attention back to Karter. “All good here,” she said, tone just as uninterested and monotonous to match her demeanor.

“Excellent,” Karter responded, moving his drone to address Camirin like Olline wasn’t even there. “Now, if you need anything, who do you bother?” he said suddenly, barely glancing at Olline, the only sign that he was talking to her.

“Um, Camirin?”

Camirin gave a lazy wave, the only response to her correct answer. In unison, her supervisor and IT contact turned to leave. “Welcome to the team,” Camirin said belatedly as the office door opened once more.

Before Olline could respond, the door slid down behind the drones and Camirin. Olline was alone once again.

Olline let out a slow breath, relieved that Karter didn’t know she had already violated her work order. If nothing else, the fake update she pushed wouldn’t affect the chips’ ability to communicate with the server; no one would ever know she snooped around. The chips would sync with the new, dummy version and continue doing whatever it was they were told to do without a lapse.

“No one will know,” she told herself again, flexing her fingers. Unless there’s outdated chips connected to the server . . .

But with a shake of her head, she dispelled the thought. Who would have active biomagitech chips so old that they wouldn’t reconnect with a simple server update?

The passing of time went unnoticed after her rocky start. Karter never came to check on her—in person or otherwise. Occasionally, she noted the sounds of movement beyond the room that served as her office. She wasn’t alone on the floor anymore, but no one came in to introduce themselves or invite her to lunch. Olline’s shoulders slumped, deflating slightly, and she decided if they didn’t want to say hi to her, she would not make the effort either. At least for today.

It was only by happenstance that Olline looked up from her latest transfer to note that business hours ended over three hours ago. Her jaw dropped at the realization, and as if on cue, her stomach grumbled. “I’ll bring more snacks tomorrow,” she murmured.

She got up, stretched until her shoulders popped, and prepared to immerse herself in work in a similar capacity tomorrow. The Police and Securities Department should have given this contract to a team of engineers, not one person, even if that person was an earth caster. So, Olline was determined to prove they hadn’t made a mistake. That she alone could, in fact, handle the workload.

Plus, she was good at it. Like really good.

She left her devices where they were, activating her three-factor authentication before shutting them down. Just because she had snooped in files questionable for her to look into, didn’t mean she wanted others to do the same.

The long hours of the day slammed into her as soon as she exited the room. Her shoulders sagged, and her eyelids were too heavy to raise all the way. Olline was slow leaving the server room, waving her digital fob over the door to clock out for the night like Karter said. She was only vaguely aware that the hallway looked exactly as it did when she arrived. Completely void of other breathing life.

Or so she thought. She wasn’t so tired to miss the shift in shadows from the corner of her eye.

She was, however, too sluggish to move out of the way.