Warden exhaled slowly. “Stenc impersonated someone in order to retrieve a file from a rival company. So technically this job is under our jurisdiction. But you are also correct that certain members of the government would like to have that file. It contains… delicate information.”
“Are we talking missile guidance plans or naked pictures?” I asked.
“Neither,” said Warden. “But… it’s closer to the former.”
“Weapons design,” I replied. “Probably created by someone not willing to sell to the good old US military. But this billionaire stole it. And now we steal it from him. Cool. Do we get a commendation if we find it? ‘Best Government Thief’?”
“You get to leave this van,” said Prefect.
Which sounded like an even better reward, honestly.
That night, Warden sent Tweedledee inside.
He scaled the side of the building. For all that he looked like an accountant, he picked his way up thebuilding’s brick wall like a spider up a web. I blinked, impressed. “Parkour enthusiast?” I asked Warden.
“Former cat burglar,” she replied.
Which just goes to show that you should never judge by appearances.
Tweedledee chose a window on the sixth floor, presumably because there would be fewer alarms at such a high entry point. He coaxed the window open and slipped inside. He flitted down the hallway, using his visor to avoid infrared sensors and other traps. We watched him through that same visor, seeing everything he did on one screen while another depicted the point of view of the building’s security cameras. Those cameras blurred around Tweedledee’s face. It was good to know that the anti-facial-recognition software in our visors worked.
Tweedledee slipped over another sensor embedded in the floor and approached Stenc’s office. It was locked, but nothing a good thief couldn’t handle. He slipped into the office, scanned it for infrared trip wires, and came up empty.
Tweedledee seemed to exhale in relief. Then he squatted down beside Stenc’s computer.
And then something at the edge of the screentwitched.
I blinked and stepped closer to the screen. Stenc’s office looked wholly ordinary: a desk, a computer, file cabinets, a few crates below the desk, and an empty bin.
My attention was drawn to a black metal boxsitting under a table in the far corner of the room. It looked like a large computer chassis.
Until it simplyunfoldeditself.
I drew in a sharp breath. “Prefect?”
He was watching another screen. When he heard the thread of panic in my voice, he hurried to my side. “What is that?” I asked, pointing.
The crate rearranged itself and I realized what we were looking at.
A dog.No, I thought. It was a not-dog. No dog could ever look as creepy as that creature. There was no head, and those legs were back-hinged. The sight filled me with a sense of wrongness.
It was one of those robot dogs that the military and police used in unmanned operations.
“Guard dog,” whispered Warden, her face tight. “That wasn’t in my informant’s report.”
Tweedledee saw the not-dog and jumped. He made for the door.
Which slammed shut two inches from his nose. He must have tripped the security.
There was a heartbeat of stillness.
Tweedledee yanked at the doorknob, but it didn’t budge. Fear was written into his every movement, and I held my breath in shared horror. Being trapped was one of those primal nightmares that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Tweedledee pulled a window breaker from his belt and pressed it to the window. The glass did not so much as crack. Not-glass, then.
This entire building was a trap ofnots.
“Some kind of shatterproof polymer,” said Warden. “That wasn’t in the report, either.”
