Featured image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay
More clicking. “Can you hand me the files she had with her?” she asked the room. Giant carried them over and she quickly thumbed through them. This was followed by more clicks. “My God” she said. “Didn’t she even look at his history? Over the years five members of HR have been retired because of that watch.”
We were all a bit shocked. Not because of the retirements. Those were the stuff of legend. She’s right. Only a fool would have walked that road again. What shocked us was seeing Pretty Little Thing transform from babe in the woods to operations commander before her uncle had fully expired. There was still a small bit of gasp and gurgle going on.
“I wish you hadn’t cut his throat” she said looking at me. “We could have asked him what was really going on. According to the job log, you, Henry and The Acrobats have a job to do together. Was he protecting someone?”
“Sorry about earlier” she continued. “There have always been rumors in the family about what my uncle and this company really did. I didn’t fully believe them and my parents weren’t thrilled when I came to work here. It was just a bit of a shock realizing what you were and that the rumors were true. I wasn’t scared of you. Rather it was the realization I was going to be in the same room when it went down. No. I had no idea what was happening. I simply realized that many mechanics in the same room was going to lead to at least one open hood before the meeting was over.”
“I thought you called us units” I interjected.
“Officially they, I guess we, do” responded Pretty Little Thing. “Thank God I did a stint in HR so I can navigate this, otherwise I’d be dead too.”
“We have an HR system?” The Acrobats asked in unison.
“Same one as the hackers you saw on your way to the conference room” Pretty Little Thing replied. “Oh, everyone in the legitimate side of the company uses the same one as well. There are three different installations. One for the legitimate side, one for the hacker side and one for the units. The only thing different about yours is the security and lack of a Web interface.”
“Why can’t we have that?” asked Giant. Nice guy, but not really up on world events.
“You really think we want some hacker or worse yet government agency getting into that system and reading up on who did what job and how to contact them? There is no access to that system from the outside world. It is air gapped. This badge and thumb reader doesn’t just log you in, it reboots this machine from a different drive and operating system, enabling a different network connection while running a scan for viruses and such. My uncle either never logs in or recently ran a scan because we got in quick. Usually it is many minutes.”
“Here. Let me send your next assignment out. That will mark you deployed and it will show up on your phones shortly.” She walked over to a credenza and pulled out a standard convenient store burner phone still in the commercial plastic. Handing it to Giant she asked “can one of you cut this open for me or do I need to find scissors in the desk?”
Faster than the rest, Giant had a blade out which sliced through the clamshell packaging like it wasn’t even there. A dramatic feet for a steel blade. Something biblical considering this one was synthetic.
“Good” said Pretty Little Thing as she turned it on. “It still has some power.” After a few button presses she grabbed a Post-It notepad and began scribbling a sticky for each of us. “Each of you take one. I’m going to charge this phone back at my desk. In a few hours send a hello message to that number. That will mean you all have this number and I have yours without having to sit here looking them up. If you want to use a non-company phone, that is fine as well. If I figure any of this out, or find I’m about to be retired, I will reach out to you. Now go. I need to clean up here.”
“Isn’t that why the cleaners are coming?” asked Giant.
“I need to remove my digital traces and fingerprints. They will take care of the bodies and room. Oh shit! Rachel!”
We all looked at her.