with another code. He unlocked the door and they were in the office building.
The overhead lights were off, but all the walls were windows, and the sunlight provided more than enough light to see by. The floors were polished white reflective tiles, and the offices and meeting rooms had short, fuzzy black carpets. The walls between rooms were all made of glass, as were the doors, so all the rooms looked like fishbowls. Nita shuddered at the thought of working in a place like this. Big Brother always watching.
She looked around, but there were no guards. No people at all. The whole floor was deserted. Would they really just trust that security cameras and PIN codes would be enough to keep people out?
Nita paused, eyes narrowed. She didn’t buy it.
“Where are the guards, Fabricio?” Her voice was soft.
He hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t know. There’s usually always a few.”
On cue, the elevator dinged, and Nita’s eyes widened. She gestured for the others to hide before realizing there was nowhere to go because literally every wall was glass.
Instead, she pointed to either side of the elevator door, and Kovit nodded, smoothly moving to one side, while Nita took the other. Fabricio, realizing what was about to happen, wisely ducked out of range beneath a desk.
The elevator doors slid open, and Kovit flicked his switchblade out.
When the first guard stepped out, Kovit darted forward, stabbing him in the neck, instantly severing his spine and killing him.
Nita swung around, darting into the elevator before the body had fallen, her scalpel raised. The guard reached for his gun, but never made it, her blade going into his eyes and up into his brain as she buried it as deep as possible. Kovit stepped in and slit the man’s throat for good measure.
They dragged the bodies out of the elevator, and Nita swore as she tried to pry her scalpel from the dead man’s eye socket. It was sticky and wet when it came out, and she wiped it absently on his clothes.
From under the table, Fabricio squeaked, “Is it over?”
“It’s over.” Nita’s voice was hard. “Let’s get going before more show up.”
Fabricio crept out from under his desk, studiously avoiding looking at the dead bodies as he led them down the hall to another office, this one obviously more important because it was huge. Through the glass walls, Nita could clearly see two couches, a coffee table, a massive desk larger than their Airbnb bed, with three monitors on it, and a wall of bookshelves—the only non-glass wall in the whole floor.
Fabricio input another PIN code, and the glass door buzzed open.
The three of them stepped into the room, and Fabricio headed directly for the desk. He powered on the computer and stared at the blank screen for a moment, expression inscrutable, then shook his head, as if dislodging an unpleasant thought.
Nita went around his shoulder, a memory bank in hand. She’d found one that claimed to hold fifteen terabytes—she hoped it was enough. Even if she couldn’t get everything, she would be able to get a massive amount of data.
Fabricio entered a series of passwords, pressed his thumb into the scanner, and finally the computer appeared to deem him acceptable and the home screen came up.
Nita plugged the memory bank in and gave Fabricio a look. He shrugged and set the device as a backup machine for what was on the computer.
“Most of the information is on servers, which we host here.” Fabricio typed in another password. “But this is the only terminal in the building that can access it all. My father was more than a little paranoid.”
“With good cause, it seems,” Kovit commented.
“Indeed.”
The computer chimed, and then a small window with a loading bar came up. Time until download completed: thirty minutes.
Nita let out a breath and leaned back. Thirty minutes.
Kovit took off his sunglasses and put them on the desk, rubbing his eyes before sitting on one of the couches on the other side of the room and cleaning his switchblade. He made an unhappy noise when the blood didn’t come off. “Is there a sink somewhere I can clean this?”
“The washroom is just down the hall,” Fabricio said.
Kovit rose and slipped away, still trying to rub the blood out of the grooves of his switchblade.
Fabricio sat in the plush leather chair across from Nita, hands in his lap. He turned to her. “Is there any information you want to look at before it finishes downloading?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.