Chapter 2: Barbarians (Part I)

Out of breath and hackles dialed up to kill-dash-nine, Elaine arrived on scene in the Computing Commons Atrium. She skipped over the elevator and slammed right up the stairs because taking the stairs pissed her off, and she felt in her a very strong need for anger. Who was campus security to raid her lab anyway?

Further questions swam in her head and her fingers flexed unbidden as if trying to find the proper grip to throttle the right person. If anyone even touched the—

There were uniformed campus security officers clustered around the double-door entrance to the lab further up the balcony. She recognized one of them, her older brother’s high school friend, Zach Rooke. The Zach “Attack.” He stood there with the other guards, dawdling, chatting idly, eyes scanning. He was on lookout. He had to have known she’d be coming. Zach the traitor!

He had the other uniforms as distracted as himself, but there was more than one entrance to the lab. And she was already at it.

She instinctively reached for her cardkey, but she didn’t need it—the door was ajar.

A wiry worker in an Atrium uniform pushed through before she had a chance to grab the handle. After one glance at her expression, he wordlessly scurried away as fast as his legs would carry him.

The scene on the other side of the door took the fury out of her sails—her gait caught short, and her hand went to her mouth.

“My stuff!”

The text message’s usage of the word “raid” from her text stood out as an extreme understatement. Unless by raid she meant that Vikings had landed outside the lab, who then proceeded to rape, pillage, and burn everything in sight. Certainly, no desks were upturned and the tables were still intact, but the room had been stripped bare of computer equipment and cables. Papers lay scattered on the floor here and there, but most had been shuffled in stacks into chairs. The thin layer of dust over the tables had been disturbed by rough hands, empty spaces where desktops and servers would have sat gleamed back.

Green tap cables hung limply from the ceiling around the soldering station. Someone even managed to pry off the breadboard and nonworking circuit that had been accidentally superglued to the workbench. Now that took dedication. Elaine wondered how they managed to do it without scraping the hell out of the anti-static surface, she noted and stored that question for later, perhaps after she got said breadboard back.

The rampant absence of essential equipment continued through the entire room. In her head she checked off a running inventory and found everything of any substance missing. Even the broken digital phone and its cord had been taken.

Campus security had left the room empty. No electronic hum. No flashing lights. It felt like an auditorium with no people. Barren. Except for the dust. Dust, unheard of since the beginning of time—or at least her first day in the lab—had been stirred into the air.

She sneezed. The dust in the air made her eyes water. She ignored it.

“Elaine, calm down.” Of course, it was Zach.

His badge glittered at about eye level; she eyed him over her glasses with a gaze she hoped conveyed a message of certain pain if he stood in her way.

“Stop. Breathe,” he said, making lowering motions with his hands and trying to put on a tough act—but he still jumped out of her way like a squirrel when she abruptly changed direction as she paced. He wiped a hand at his forehead and put his hands near each other as if putting her in a picture frame. “I heard the call on my radio and thought that I’d get here before you did…maybe find out what’s happening. Please don’t get hysterical, I’ve already one person take a swing at me today.”

“Did you swoop in and empty someone else’s lab of all their equipment?”

“No,” he said. “I am not even part of this—“ He nodded his head in the direction of the door. “—I just came up to… And, uh, yanno, make sure they didn’t break any of your computers. I know you’re sensitive about that. And it was Fran.” He rubbed his shoulder. “I think she bruised my arm.”

“She’s like that,” Elaine said. “And thanks.” She nudged one of the chairs with her toe, it screeched softly as it slid a few inches. A few minutes earlier she might have kicked it across the room, but now she just felt deflated. She had nothing to lash out at, except maybe Zach, and it was obvious he wasn’t at fault.

“Yeah,” he said. “Are you ready to listen now?”

“I reserve the right to deploy my death ray, but I’ll listen.”

That made him blink a few times, but he went on anyway. “Well, here’s the news: someone ratted you out—or, I think I mean, someone ratted out your lab… office… whatever it is. Dickeys says that the Captain Swornson himself came out to confiscate your stuff, orders direct from the Dean of Engineering or someone high up like that.”

“Herr Commandant?”

“Ha ha, very funny.” Zach frowned. “Don’t ever call him that to his face. Swornson is an ex-cop and he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. If he knew that I was telling you about this, he’d can my ass. Just so we’re clear, okay?”

“Okay. So, why my lab?”

“An anonymous tipster led them to believe that someone has been pirating music from the Commons and whatever notes the tip cribbed led the tech support staff right here. Something about an Internet address. Anyway. Dickeys said that someone found evidence of illegitimate files on the network in here.

“Dean tells Swornson to drop the hammer. And, as you say, everyone swoops in and that’s all she wrote.”

“How?” she said. If most that wasn’t patently ridiculous she would have felt the need to say more.  “Most of my work in here is encrypted. They may be able to empty out the entire room in twenty minutes, but they’re not going to break into my stuff just like that.”

Zach made a face. “Maybe that’s why they decided to take it. Officer Swornson was already gone by the time I got here. So I had to ask Dickeys and Polt and they didn’t pay much attention after being told to watch the door.”

“Int five.” Elaine sighed.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, not too bright, those two. I need you to walk with me before they come over here. Being that they were told to take you to the office if you showed up…”

“You didn’t tell them who I was?”

“What. Do I look like a jerk?” he said. “We should get you out of here before they notice we’ve been in here, alone, for so long.”

Elaine followed Zach out of the room and he pulled the door closed behind her. She didn’t wait for him when he turned around and waved an a-okay to the Campus Security at the other door and he had to walk quickly after her to catch up. As he did, the elevator doors opened and she slipped inside.

“Are you going to be okay?” Zach said after a long moment.

He was a good ole boy, she mused, the older brother’s friend from high school who really was a jock but had a soft spot in his heart for the little sister, even if she was a geek. Elaine couldn’t stay mad at him for long—even if he did work for the enemy. Her private space had been violated; her stuff taken and possibly soon to be molested by whatever passed as computer forensics in some dank IT dungeon.

She almost felt sick thinking about it.

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

There was no appropriate facial expression to portray how she felt; and, she knew, feeling sick over it wouldn’t help matters. So instead of letting herself slump, she cast a quirked half-smile at her old friend, dog-of-the-enemy.

He bought the ploy and smiled amiably back. “Good. Just, lay low and I’m sure this whole thing will blow over. The University has been really on edge about music piracy and lawsuits. Just don’t get in any trouble, go to class, you’ll probably be fine.”

“Will do, Mister Osifer,” she said.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

“There’s one last thing,” Zach said as they stepped out.

Elaine could see he was trying to look apologetic.

“What is it?”

“I’m going to have to ask for your secure card.”