Chapter Text
April 2012
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The next day, I got a few interesting messages, via both e-mail and snail-mail.
I got the email in the morning (after waking up in my own bed for the first time in weeks, Hallelujah, and then fixing my morning tea). The email had been forwarded from one of John's burner accounts to mine, and was titled simply: "I'm sorry".
Elizabeth,
I'm sorry I tried grabbing your boobs and called you a bitch last week. It wasn't right for me to do it and I won't do it in the future. (I really don't want to get punched again.) I'm also taking the anti-sexual harassment training because I'll get kicked out of college if I don't.
Please tell your psycho girlfriend that I apologized to you.
Regards,
William Dunkel III
I was snickering throughout the blatant non-apology, but when I got to the "psycho girlfriend" comment I burst out laughing. Obviously Shaw had paid Fingers a visit, and it sounded like Carter might've had a word with the school as well.
But, "girlfriend"? Really? Shaw and I were most definitely not an item. She wasn't even on my radar, the dream at the clinic notwithstanding. (And that'd been just that—a strange dream, probably stress-related from too much studying and worrying about Dr. Goodwin.)
She wasn't even my type! She wasn't bookish or geeky. No glasses, not a redhead—
-but instead: dangerous, fit, playful, and snarky, with really nice legs, and even if she didn't know how to configure iptables from scratch or build a database schema, she was still pretty bright, and she knew how to shoot a gun-
...all right, so maybe I'd have to think about all that more. But later. Even after a solid night's rest, I still wasn't caught up on sleep, and I wasn't sure if such thoughts were from sleep deprivation.
The next items of interest came in the morning mail. Inside of a plain envelope with my name penned in flowing cursive was a "Get Well Soon!" card. It looked like it had been custom crafted, decorated with watercolor flowers on a colorful background. Inside was a neatly written message and a pre-paid credit card.
The message read:
Elizabeth,
I asked John to forward this to you. I hope you're doing well and will be out of the hospital soon.
This doesn't sound very good on paper, but I'm really sorry about tasing you. It was the only way I could think of to make the chaos stop. I thank the Lord that you made it out of the warehouse alive.
John says that your computer hacking prowess was instrumental in saving Bob and me from Richard. That guy was crazy. I think he was planning to kill me too at the warehouse, but you stepped in even though it put your life in danger. You are doing God's work. "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down her life for another." Bless you.
I have a line on some mTech computer hardware and phones at a steep discount—I typed up some model #s for you on the attached sheet, if you're interested. Bob and I also put a little something on the credit card as a thank-you.
I know it's not much in the way of thanks, but I owe you my life, and that I can never repay.
Love and God bless,
Anna
p.s. Please let me know if you ever need anything shipped in or out of the States (as long as it's not drugs!)
I smiled at the heartwarming message (okay, and at the offer of cheap computer hardware too) and carefully propped the card up on my kitchen table. Unlike Finger's half-assed "apology", Anna's card deserved a reply. I really wasn't sore about getting tased, and I didn't want her feeling guilty about it—sure, it'd hurt, but it'd also de-escelated things...sort of. Ish.
I skimmed the list of computer components she had attached and raised my eyebrows at some of the prices. An mTech GraFX card for that cheap? How could I resist?
Smiling, I got up and searched for a piece of paper and an envelope to write a response...
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Greer studied the images on the twin monitors off to his right. The screen on the left, displaying a status snapshot taken a week ago, presented a world map with countries highlighted in various pleasing shades of green. (The United States was particularly vivid, especially along the coasts, with the expected hotspots in California and New York, but eastern Asia was a hotbed of activity as well.) A summary of statistics along the side of the map showed that a healthy 83% of the network was operational.
The map on the right told a more dismal story. A live feed from the network, it purged nodes from the report as they grew stale and exceeded their report-in timeout. The readiness percentage for the network was down to 35% and dropping by tenths of a percent every few minutes.
Greer's eyes flicked from the monitors to the young woman sitting before him, then down to the dossier on his desk. Decima as an organization was much too large for Greer to know every member by name, especially the incoming data scientists, software engineers, and IT administrators that had been recruited from top universities worldwide. Fortunately, Greer had at his disposal the compiled dossiers of every entity associated with Decima, all stored in a massive database, and he had pulled Cassandra Rios' file well before she had stepped foot into the secured area that housed his office.
Knowing all there was to know about a person before he met them tended to be an unsettling effect, and he used it well.
"...as soon as our sources reported that the FBI had gained control of Titan, we set each node to wipe the encryption keys and partitioned the last two hops in front of the ingestion nodes off from the rest of the network," the young woman said. "There's no way for anyone to get anything useful off the remaining servers. To summarize, we've lost fifty-five percent of our scanning capability, but we're still operational with the smaller botnets."
"A most interesting report, Miss Rios," Greer said kindly. He folded his hands neatly on the desk between them. "Please tell me why this is a concern."
The woman looked startled. "We've just lost half of the Observatory with the collapse of the Titan botnet."
"The Observatory is a 'best-efforts' endeavor, given its dependencies on...third-party vendors."
"I know my project isn't a high priority, Sir," Cassandra said. She crossed her arms. "But you can't deny that it's produced valuable intelligence on the behavior of the Machine."
"I cannot deny that," Greer acknowledged with a tilt of his head. "Your division's efforts at compromising existing botnets have yielded quite an interesting glimpse into the distributed nature of the Machine, but—"
"Our efforts," Cassandra corrected.
"I beg your pardon?" Greer feigned surprise.
"Our efforts," Cassandra repeated. "JJ, Ari, and me. Just us."
"This would be Julianna Jabari in APT engineering and Ariadne Galvin in Data Warehousing?"
"Yes Sir," Cassandra said. She finally had the good graces to look nervous. Her foot wiggled.
"Continue."
"My division had nothing to do with it. The three of us have been working alone on the Observatory in our spare time. JJ wrote her thesis on compromising in-memory malware and Ari has the resources for setting up the shell companies and external routes to safely ingest the data. I do the analysis and machine learning algorithms. No pun intended. The Observatory is our baby."
"And you are all doing this outside of your work for your team? While meeting or exceeding your assigned deliverables, I hope?"
The young woman shrugged. "They don't give us very fun things to do."
"There is a reason it is called 'work', Miss Rios."
"Sure. And yes, we do all of our assigned tasks. We still have free time. Especially me."
"Idle hands are the tools of the devil," Greer said. "Or so some say. I presume there is a reason you haven't asked your superiors for more tasks to complete?"
Cassandra hesitated. "To be perfectly honest, Sir, I've been here four years, I have security clearance to know about some really fat whales, and I'm still doing the digital equivalent of swabbing toilets. All three of us are. I think this project is proof that we could be doing a lot more for the organization."
"And you presented your superior with this idea, I trust?"
"Er...no. I mean, technically yes, I guess."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning my boss is a jackass, okay? I'm sorry, but I have to say it. And JJ's boss treats her like a mop. And Ariadne's boss would sell her own mother to get ahead." She held up her hands and took a deep breath. "So like—my boss keeps taking my ideas and acting like they're his. And I figure, that means the ideas must be worth something at least. So I went to my skip-level, cause I trust her, and she approved our access to an external route so we could ingest the data."
Greer considered all this quite carefully. He stayed quiet, letting the silence build. Cassandra twitched and focused her eyes downward to the desk.
"Why are you here, Miss Rios?" he asked after some seconds. "And why are you alone? Where are your partners in this endeavor?"
"I thought it would be easier to get a meeting with you one-on-one. And if...you know." She looked down. "If you disapproved of the project, and there was...disciplinary action...I wanted to take full responsibility for it. I was the instigator."
"Come now," Greer said. "Instigator. Let's not use such negative terms. Leader would be more appropriate. Architect, perhaps. Mastermind, if you're feeling villainous."
Cassandra looked uncertain.
"Let's cut to the chase, shall we?" Greer said. "I have known of your little side-project since its inception."
Cassandra's face betrayed her surprise, but she stayed quiet.
"You are here because you want to form a dedicated team to study the Machine further, starting with your two co-conspirators. You're asking for more resources and my blessing for the continued operations of the Observatory, despite this recent setback."
"I...yes, Sir. Exactly."
"Consider it done, effective immediately. You will report to me, but work alongside our ASI clearinghouse. You may request additional resources as necessary. I may grant them, depending on your justifications. Does this suit you?"
She nodded quickly, looking faint.
"Good. I reward initiative when it is employed in a deliberate and careful manner."
"Thank you," she stuttered.
"I will take care of your transfers to your new organization personally. Please send my administrative assistant any requirements you have for your physical workspace and equipment, and she will make it happen. You may go now."
Cassandra rose to her feet, tottering unsteadily as she shook Greer's hand and then turned to leave.
"Oh, and Miss Rios?" Greer said. "Do be careful. I appreciate the initiative. Others may not."
She nodded and left.
Greer allowed himself a faint smile before he seated himself before his desk and returned to his work.
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