Chapter Twenty-six
The inside of the Swiss database looked like an office, crossed with a factory. It was a maze of hallways, leading into dead-end cubicles, but the whole place had a very mechanical, industrial feel. There were sharp-cornered recesses in the walls, where whirring gears and exposed circuitry could be seen, spitting out sheets of paper covered with numbers, which fed into other slots in the walls. Outstretched needles traced glowing lines in midair, like a seismograph in three dimensions.
In one of the cubicles, mostly hidden behind a corner, Goom could see a scientist in a white labcoat, writing furiously on his clipboard as he watched five figures moving about on a screen. It was hard to get a good view, but Goom was pretty sure that one of the figures was an Andalite.
The four RAFians had to duck against a wall as a spidery robot suddenly appeared around a corner, scanning back and forth with its single red eye. It was a security protocol, Goom quickly realized. A program written to scan for anything that didn't belong in this network.
In a sudden darting motion, it locked its eye onto the RAFians.
Cloaky, fortunately, didn't hesitate. He raised his hand and fired a bolt of golden-scarlet light, the energy attack frying the robot's circuits, leaving it crackling and hissing as it slumped, lifeless.
At first, the scientist in his cubicle didn't seem to have noticed the noise. But, after a moment's hesitation, he set down his clipboard and looked around. He didn't seem to be able to see the RAFians, but he had definitely noticed the ruined security program, as he quickly came over and began to inspect the wreckage.
"Move," Cloaky hissed, and they all took off at a rapid pace through the halls. They moved quickly but quietly, as they wove their way through the twisting maze.
<What are we searching for?> Ax wondered, directing the question at Goom.
"Something that will help the outerworlders override the facility's security," Goom whispered back. "It will probably look like a key, or a passcard. Something like that."
Up ahead was a wall, dividing the hallway into two paths, one left and one right. A series of blinking lights, running along a cable, flashed from left to right, so the RAFians quickly decided to take the path to the right.
Three more robots lay in wait, but these looked slightly sturdier, more like turrets than spiders. Their green eyes scanned back and forth from their parapets as they monitored the hallway.
Goom aimed his dracon, Cloaky raised his hands, and Rad hefted the zat gun that she'd brought, preparing to fire off a three-shot burst. "On three," Goom whispered. "One, two, three!" The three of them shot the three robots simultaneously, but one of the robots survived and instantly registered the attack. Its green eye changed to red, and an alarm began to blare from the entire building.
"GO!" Goom yelled as the four of them charged forward. "It's all or nothing!"
As they turned a corner, they spotted a long corridor, which looked out of place because it was so plain compared to the rest of their surroundings. It was nothing but featureless dark grey walls, with no machinery at all. At the end of the hallway, was a glass case. The RAFians were too far away to see what was underneath the glass.
Cloaky began to move cautiously down the corridor, but Goom had a bad feeling about it. There was no way that anything good could be at the end of that hallway, he thought. It was too obvious. A password would need to be stored somewhere hidden and out of the way, deep within the computer's memory system, where nobody could access it. Not on display.
"It's a trap!" Goom said, pulling Cloaky back from the corridor. "It's a decoy file, set there to trick viruses. We need to go back. This way."
The alarm, meanwhile, had mysteriously gone silent. As the four RAFians made their way back through the hallway where they had come, they overheard two voices talking to one another. There was a slightly static quality to both the voices, like they were being heard over a phone. The RAFians pressed themselves against the wall and listened.
"Another false alarm?" one of the speakers was saying. "The system has been so temperamental, ever since we started this whole project. It keeps going off over nothing."
"Yeah, tell me about it," the other said, his voice laced with exasperation. "Too many variables to keep track of. The programming we have in place can't handle it all."
"I'm going to double-check the data," the first voice said. "Make sure it really was a false alarm. But, I swear, some of our abandoned accounts have developed sentience. They keep popping up in random places."
The second voice laughed at the joke, as the first one moved off down the hallway. The RAFians could make out a plastic swooshing sound, followed by a beep, and the sound of a door opening.
Of course! It was the scientists, Goom realized.
They were the key. Or, at least, their accounts were. The scientists had the passcards with them. In other words, their identifying information, their security data, was attached to their online identities.
Goom grabbed Rad by the shoulder and moved quickly down the hallway, chasing after the first scientist, the one who had said he was going to check the data. Ax followed, careful not to let his hooves be heard clattering against the floor, and Cloaky snuck along next to him.
The RAFians knew they had to get to that data before the scientist did, and destroy the records. If they left behind any suspicion that the network had been infiltrated, the scientists would reset all the security systems, and anything the RAFians managed to steal would be useless.
Rad suddenly had an idea, and she decisively pulled ahead of the other RAFians. As she took the lead, the four of them slipped quickly through the doorway that the scientist had used moments ago, right before it swung shut.
Goom nodded at Rad, quickly realizing the same thing that had occurred to her.
Ma'at, who instinctively knew everything Rad did thanks to their linked thoughts, began to disengage from Rad's brain stem. The Tok'ra slithered out through Rad's mouth, and Rad instinctively gagged even as she held out her hands to hold her parasitic snake-like counterpart. She was dazed for a moment by the sudden disorienting and bizarre sensation of having her consciousness split in half, because she could now simultaneously see from both perspectives at once.
Ax's eyes widened at the sight, horrified. He brought his tail forward threateningly, but Goom and Cloaky both spotted his motion and held their hands up, silently signaling to him that Ma'at was a friend. Ax calmed slightly, but he kept his suspicious gaze on the pincer-mouthed alien snake.
With Ma'at in hand, Rad ran forward, until she caught a glimpse of white. It was the scientist. The Tok'ra launched herself into the air at the same instant that Rad swung her arm forward, their combined momentum flinging Ma'at in a wild arc down the corridor.
Their aim was true, and Ma'at landed on the scientist's shoulder. He didn't even seem to notice the touch. Which of course would make sense, if he was an outerworlder. Within a database like this, he would be denied even the luxury of roleplayed text descriptions to tell him what was going on.
Ma'at reminded herself that he was not a real person, merely an avatar representing an online account. Thus there was nothing even at all amoral about taking him as a host. The Tok'ra quickly plunged herself into the back of his neck, and wrapped around his spinal chord. His eyes flashed yellow as Ma'at took control.
Ma'at continued along the scientist's previous path, barely stumbling as she took over the task of moving his body. She had to keep up the illusion, make it seem as though he was still in control. Sitting at his computer somewhere in the real world, he would have noticed nothing amiss.
She began to look through his memories, curious as to what she might glean from an outerworlder host. It wasn't at all like looking at a human brain. There was nothing there except a name, and a bunch of utterly raw data. Streams of numbers, activity logs, graphs and charts, passwords. No emotion. No memories, except what the account itself had registered as having done.
Rad tapped Goom on the shoulder, as the four RAFians trailed along behind Ma'at and the scientist. "Ma'at can get you the passcard," Rad whispered to Goom. She could read Ma'at's thoughts as though they were her own. Because, of course, they were. "But you'll have to make a copy somehow. If I, I mean, if she gives you the original, then the scientist will know something is wrong when it's gone."
"No problem," Goom whispered back, holding up the tracking device that he was still holding. "I can save the file to this."
Rad nodded towards the scientist, signaling Goom to move. Ma'at subtly and slowly reached the scientist's hand into his pocket, and produced a black card, the size of a credit card, attached to a chain. Goom ducked, staying out of view, and scanned the card with the tracking device as he walked along next to the scientist. He turned around and gave Rad a thumbs up as he fell back.
Ma'at kept moving, knowing as well as the scientist did where he was going. She soon arrived at the data station, and quickly deleted the records of suspicious activity before the scientist would even see them. He would be none the wiser.
Her mission accomplished, she detached herself from the man's brain stem and slithered back to Rad, who gratefully picked her up and allowed herself to be reinfested.
"We got what we came for," Goom whispered to the others. "Let's get out of here."
