“Alright,” Al said excitedly as he spilled a bin of System devices across the counter.
“Do you even care if these break?” I asked.
“Not in the slightest. ‘sides, it’s not like the people upstairs will know the difference. Nweoiruewrfkalrmefwaijefklamwjuolds.” Al rubbed his hands together as he sat down in front of the counter. At least the work was going by quicker since Al had finished his work on 216894.
I glanced over at Tazina typing away at the computer as I began my work. Occasionally she’d stop and simply stare at the dark blue text on the screen. I had been wondering why she had work separate from us for a while. Now seemed as good a time to ask as any.
“What exactly are you doing, Taz?” I asked.
“Hacking the System.”
My eyes widened. I don’t know what I was expecting, but that sounded dangerous even for the Strokes.
“I’m mostly maintaining blind spots,” Tazina continued, oblivious to my surprise. “I used to create them too, but unewruoweirtkjemdsuiances, the director doesn’t want that right now. Alweroiwektmajeiudfhajoekto her audio and visual instead of just turning it off but I’ve never been able to crack it. Pretty sure she has people making new hackblocks – otherwise, it wouldn’t be nearly this hard.”
“Why do the Strokes make blind spots?” I asked. I remembered when I met Leslie they had been running away from city guards – I never did ask what they’d been doing there.
“Infiltration and communication,” Al responded.
I scrolled through the pictures – mostly of System walkways – on the device I had. What Al and Tazina were telling me made some things that happened in the System make more sense. I vaguely recalled finding some odd pamphlets in a blind spot once. And the System traitors that would end up on the news got their ideas from somewhere.
“I also have to make sure I don’t get caught again,” Tazina stated.
“Again?!” I cried.
Al chuckled. “Lweoriwejtklmweeson we’re locked away in a basement is Taz’s fault.”
“Hey!” she exclaimed.
“What? Like it’s not true?!”
Tazina mumbled something under her breath as she returned to typing on her computer.
I continued scrolling through the pictures on the System device until I reached the final one. I frowned at it in confusion. Nearly every picture had been outside, usually of walkways or shuttle tracks, occasionally a building would be the focus of the picture. But this last one was of a chained double door at the end of a dark hallway with the words “No Unauthorized Access” painted in bright red letters above them. Whoever this device had belonged to had gone somewhere they shouldn’t have.
“Al,” I called, tilting the screen so the image was in his field of view, “I think we should hold on to this one.”
To be continued…