WRAITH CASE STUDY AUGUSTA PINE #2
“Everything goes through the scanners,” said Centurion. “Mail, personal belongings, food deliveries. I can’t see how any Trojan programs could be brought inside. It could be a coincidence. Perhaps someone in the mainframe tripped something and triggered a lockdown.”
Keiko frowned at the espresso machine. “Do we have power?”
“No,” said Centurion. “Not on this floor. When a lockdown is triggered, everything is cut.”
She pointed at the espresso maker. “So why is the coffee maker’s clock still on?”
Sure enough, a tiny digital clock glowed faintly.
“The real question is why is the time ‘zero-fifty-nine?’” said Leo. “In what time zone is there a zero o’clock?”
Steve opened his mouth as though to explain what a twenty-four-hour clock was, then closed it again. Probably a good choice.
“It must have an internal battery,” said Prefect. He pulled the espresso machine farther from the wall. “Steve, go see if you can radio security. See what they make of this.”
“Of course,” said Steve, looking grateful to escape the conversation. He navigated his way out of the kitchen using a tablet’s flashlight.
“Keiko,” said Prefect, “I want you to see if you can get the director on the phone—I know it’s the weekend and she’s with her grandkids and she told us not to disturb her, but only her codes will undo the lockdown.”
Keiko nodded and hurried away.
“What can I do?” asked Leo eagerly.
Prefect’s gaze flicked toward him. “Go find more flashlights.”
“Okay,” said Leo happily, and bounded off.
“Do we have more flashlights?” asked Centurion.
“No,” said Prefect.
As Centurion and Prefect talked among themselves, I took a few steps back.
Something about this situation was off—and it wasn’t the pitch-dark offices or the smell of coffee grounds as Prefect began disemboweling the machine to find its battery.
“If we can find out what tripped the lockdown, maybe we can disable it,” he was saying.
I glanced at the clock.
0:57
A thrill of panic tore through me. “Prefect, wait!”
We had worked together for the better part of three years.
While Prefect might gently needle me, might sigh and roll his eyes at my antics, might even complain occasionally about being saddled with a teenage wraith—I knew he respected my abilities.
When he heard the fear in my voice, his fingers froze.
“Look at the clock,” I said.
Centurion and Prefect looked at the clock. “Augusta,” Prefect began to say, frowning.
Centurion got it first. And he took two full steps back. “That clock,” he said. “It’s going down, not up.”
It was hard to tell in the dim illumination of the flashlight, but Prefect might have paled.
“It’s not a clock,” I said. “It’s a countdown.”
FORTY-TWO MINUTES REMAINING
We were trapped on the fifth floor of an ISD office building with no lights, no escape routes, and a ticking clock. We had hurried to the other side of the floor, nearest the elevators. It was as far from the kitchen as we could get.
“Forty-two minutes until what?” said Keiko. She had been trying to call the director for the better part of five minutes.
“Maybe someone set it to make their coffee,” said Leo. “Like, in forty-two minutes, it’s going to try and make a latte. You can do that through the app.”
“It has an app?” said Steve, sounding irritated. “You mean I could’ve just used my phone instead of walking across the entire floor?”
“Yeah,” said Leo. “There was a QR code on the side of the machine.”
“Why does everything have an app these days?” said Prefect, sounding about a hundred years old.
“How about we debate the pros and cons of apps after we’re not blown up by the office espresso machine,” said Keiko, her voice tight.
“And don’t say I’m panicking, Steve. I know I’m panicking.
We can’t even get a bomb squad up here because of the lockdown.
And I’ve been calling the director’s aunt’s house but apparently there’s some kind of family reunion, so I just keep getting the catering crew. ”
“The one time the director takes a weekend off,” muttered Prefect. “Of course this happens.”
“There’s got to be someone else we can call,” said Steve. “The FBI?”
Keiko gave him an offended look. “We do not need the FBI bailing us out of this.”
ISD didn’t have the greatest working relationship with the FBI.
Mostly because we could waltz in and steal their cases if there was any identity theft involved.
And they had to come to us if they wanted undercover agents to be given new identities.
And one of us might have once glitter-bombed their team at an interagency training simulation.
5 Which didn’t foster a lot of goodwill.
“They have a bomb squad, don’t they?” said Steve.
“So does the fire department,” said Keiko. “Call them. They’re not assholes.”
As they began to squabble, I stepped away from the group and nodded at Prefect.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Come on,” I said. “I want to check something. Do you have a burner phone?”
“Of course.” He pulled the thin slip of glass from his pocket and handed it to me.
I frowned at it. “No, not your normal phone. If there’s anything valuable on it, it might be compromised.”
“All my phones are burners,” said Prefect blandly. “There is no identifiable information on that.”
Wow. And I thought I was paranoid.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Just a suspicion,” I said. “I don’t want to freak anyone out before I have confirmation.”
“I believe the presence of a potential bomb and our entrapment is reason enough to ‘freak out,’” he said dryly.
“You’re not scared,” I said. Either the prospect of being blown up didn’t frighten him or he had a world-class poker face.
“It’s not the first bomb threat I’ve dealt with.”
“It’s not?”
The corner of his mouth curved upward in an enigmatic half smile.
There were times I wondered about his life before he’d become a wraith handler. I’d heard enough office gossip to know Prefect had joined ISD only five years before I had. But anytime I tried to look him up, either with web searches or a facial recognition scan, all I got was one big blank.
We returned to the kitchen. Prefect had set up a flashlight as a makeshift lamp within, shining the beam on the espresso machine. The spotlight cast an eerie shadow across the wall. “Okay,” I said, holding up Prefect’s phone. “We still have Wi-Fi, thankfully.”
“I believe all Wi-Fi is routed through the first floor,” said Prefect. “It wouldn’t be affected by the fifth story being locked down.”
I nodded. “Okay, I’m going to scan that QR code.”
“You think it’ll download malware?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. Quick response codes are like … the technology equivalent of unprotected sex. Some are safe, others aren’t. You have no way to tell. And you never know what you’re going to be infected with.”
His nose wrinkled. “Could you use a cruder metaphor?”
“Oh, I could,” I said cheerfully, “but we just had that harassment seminar.”
I turned on the camera and aimed it at the QR code. At once, the phone scanned the barcode and the screen flashed away from the camera. I waited for something to happen—a malware warning to appear on the phone or a sketchy website to pop up.
Instead, all that flashed onto the screen was the app store. The familiar logo of the espresso machine popped up. “Brewtiful Day,” I read aloud.
“I hate this app already,” said Prefect.
“It looks legit,” I said. I downloaded the app and in a minute, it had loaded onto the phone. It paired easily with the espresso machine, and several options appeared. Sure enough, it looked as though I could have the espresso machine make whatever coffee I wanted with the phone.
I frowned. “Okay, so an actual app. Not malware, then. Although I’d have to dig into the app’s code to be sure, it doesn’t look malicious. And the privacy settings are normal. It’s not trying to access your microphone or camera.” I flicked through the phone.
Prefect snapped his fingers. “Wait, this thing has an app.”
I dragged my gaze from the phone and up to his face. Then I shone the phone’s flashlight into his eyes. He jerked back.
“Just checking to see if you had a stroke,” I said.
He gave me a withering look. “I mean, in order for the communication to go between that phone and the espresso machine … it needs to pass through the internet. Which means this machine has Wi-Fi capability.”
I saw where he was going with this. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, crap. You think someone’s hacking our Wi-Fi using the coffee maker?”
It made sense. Many household items were connected to the internet. And most of the companies that produce them didn’t have the most robust security. There were accounts of hackers using smart vacuums, fridges, or even toilets to sneak into a home’s private Wi-Fi.
“I think,” said Prefect grimly, “that getting past our firewalls and stealing our encrypted files would prove very, very valuable. That’s why all our devices aren’t smart.
Why we use janitors instead of robo-cleaners.
Only our computers and phones can connect to the internet, and we keep stealing NSA cybersecurity experts to make sure those devices are as secure as possible.
This machine couldn’t have had a Wi-Fi signal when security scanned it or it would’ve been rejected outright. ”
An espresso machine was the perfect Trojan horse for an office of caffeine addicts.
But for all our flaws—and there were many—ISD wasn’t stupid.
Every day we walked through scanners that checked for bugs, for bombs, for computer viruses on any of our tech.
There were tattoo scanners at every door, in every elevator.
My mind raced. “So someone activated the Wi-Fi capability on the espresso machine,” I said. “They had to physically be here to turn it on. And once it was connected to the network…”
“The hacker got access,” said Prefect grimly. “Which means we have a traitor.”
THIRTY-ONE MINUTES REMAINING
We had four suspects.