Translation: to hack into the executive database, I didn’t just need to be inside the building; I needed to be inside the executive wing.
“Security?” Tara asked.
“Lax on the rest of the building, tight on the executive wing,” Chloe replied.
“Methinks I sense a pattern,” I said.
“You thinks?” Chloe asked. I didn’t know which was more deadly: her smile, or her tone.
“Our best bet into their system is to plant a device that magnifies the wireless signal and transmits it to our receiver,” Chloe said.
“Can you do that?” I asked.
“Duh,” Bubbles said. “Chloe can do anything.”
“Unwhelmable,” Tara coughed under her breath, and I smiled.
“So how do we get the device thingy into the executive whatever?” Bubbles asked.
My mind produced no sarcastic reply to this comment. It was just too easy.
“I think our best bet is to Doublemint it,” Chloe said. “We send one of the twins in as a decoy, and the other can plant the device.”
“That works?” I asked.
Chloe smirked. “It has the last eight times we used it,” she said. “Brittany can be very distracting.” Chloe let the word hang in the air a moment before continuing. “As long as security doesn’t figure out there are two of them, we can sneak the second one in without anyone noticing.
“And if that doesn’t work, we’ll Plan B it,” Chloe said.
I refused to ask her to clarify.
“Ohhhhh!” Bubbles said. “If we Plan B it can I plant the thingamawhatsit?”
Tara scrawled a quick note on a piece of paper and slid it toward me without anyone noticing. I read it, and understood within seconds what Plan B was. If twin #2 couldn’t get in unnoticed, she joined her sister at distracting the guards while a third, slightly more stealthy operative did the dirty work.
If one of the twins was distracting, two was more or less a three-ring (four-breasted) circus. After having gone to school with Brittany and Tiffany for a year and a half, I’d gotten afirm hold on the mathematical property known only as the Exponential Hotness of Twinness. Each twin, by virtue of the fact that there were two of them, became infinitely more attractive to the average male than either of them would have been on their own. Since neither of the twins was exactly a dog to begin with, the resulting attention when they were together was usually astronomical in proportions.
“After we plant the device,” Chloe said, looking slightly to my left as she addressed me, “it’ll be up to you to break through their safeguards and find what we’re looking for. Locate the program they’re using to hack, download any files pertaining to information that they’ve already acquired or sold, and fry their system.”
Even for someone with as much recreational hacking under her belt as me, that was a pretty tall order. I was practically giddy with techie anticipation. Or maybe that wasn’t giddiness—maybe it was dizziness, pure and simple, based on the fact that my mind was swimming with dictates and schedules and master plans. This morning: hack Infotech. This afternoon: take down Heath Shannon. Tonight: plant a bug in the evil law firm.
Tomorrow: the world.
“So,” I said, “are we ready to move out?”
Chloe rolled her eyes, like she didn’t use jargon like “move out” all the time. “No,” she said. “We’re ready to go upstairs and hang out with everyone else in the cafeteria before first period. We have to make up for the fact that we’re going to be missing half of the school day. Appearance is everything, and making appearances is key.”
“Besides,” Tara said, “somebody’s going to have to explain to the vice-principal why Brooke and Zee won’t be at school today, and why the rest of us are skipping our first four classes.”
“Like that’s going to be hard,” Bubbles said, rolling her eyes and bringing her feet into the chair next to her so that she could hook her elbows under her knees.
“Spirit conference, do you think?” Tara asked, arching one eyebrow.
“Nah,” Chloe said. “We used that one last time. Mental health day?”
“Didn’t we use that for the, like, thing with the thing?” Bubbles asked.
Chloe and Tara nodded contemplatively. Apparently, they weren’t having any of my difficulties understanding Bubbles’s meaning.
