The screen in front of her—all sixty inches of it—came alive and the three men leaned forward. The screen was split into six sections, obviously the six security cameras that had been on in the concourse. The footage was dated and timed. Three days ago at 3:20 p.m. Her flight had landed at 3:05. The screen was chaotic, a sea of bobbing heads. It was impossible to make out faces.
“Wait a second,” she said. “Can I enter your system?”
John nodded.
Felicity took a quick snapshot of herself full face with the screen’s camera, entered the code for her super secure cloud server and pulled out her facial recognition software. The software took the coordinates of her facial features, made a dataprint, matched it against the images from the concourse and isolated her face in the crowd. A faint pink square highlighted her face as she moved so she couldn’t be lost again.
She checked her second hand. The whole process had taken twenty seconds. Not bad. Not great but not bad.
There was a weird quality to the silence and she swiveled left and right. “What?”
Metal cleared his throat. “We, uh, we don’t have facial recognition software.”
Well, duh. “I know, I checked. So I used mine.” She focused back on the screen.
Okay, there she was, before the world crashed down on her. She was smiling as she moved past the purse shop, the shoe shop, the cosmetics shop. Oh man. The emotions swept over her. She’d felt so free. So light and hopeful. She’d even felt...young. Young and carefree and about to embark on a visit to a new city with a new friend. And minutes later, the whole thing crashed.
“Sorry to interrupt but—” John took a deep breath. “You, ah, checked our computer system for facial recognition software?”
Well, yeah. She’d said that, hadn’t she? Felicity nodded.
“So when did you do that?” There was a slightly choked quality to his voice.
“When I sat down.” Metal, Jacko and John all looked at her as if she had suddenly been beamed into the chair from space, à la Star Trek. “What? I did a quick check of your system. Facial recognition software has distinct features and your system didn’t have them. So I pulled my own program, loaded it and searched. Don’t worry, I’ll remove the program later, unless you want me to leave it in?”
Silence.
“Okay, guys, this is creepy. What’s wrong?”
Metal put a big hand on her shoulder, squeezed gently. “I think we’re in awe of what you just did. It would have taken me an entire morning to check to see if a system had a specific program, then find my own, load it and do a search. If I could do it at all. You did it in seconds.”
There was a strangled quality to his voice too.
She was about to answer when she saw him. Oh God, a shudder went through her as she remembered her happiness, then this man behind her with the guttural voice, threatening her. Wanting to kidnap her.
She froze the video, feeling that panic and terror all over again.
Metal was talking to Jacko, something about the hospital footage. Her voice wasn’t working so she grabbed his hand. She was shaking.
Metal stopped talking immediately and placed her cold hand between his two warm ones. “Honey? Honey, what’s wrong?”
She couldn’t catch her breath. All she could do was place the locator box around the man’s head and point.
All three men understood immediately, leaning forward.
“That the guy?” Metal said. It wasn’t really a question. He tapped the screen over her attacker’s head and the screen zoomed. “He’s threatening you right now, isn’t he?”
She nodded. She could almost feel the sharp bite of the knife in her side.
Metal’s nose was practically pressed against the screen, eyes narrowed, a fierce expression on his face. “Enlarge the frame again.”
She pressed a key and there he was, three-quarters profile, hat low over his eyes. This was going to be a problem because eyes were important to a faceprint, which measured the exact distance between pupils, the vertical distance between forehead and cheekbones, depth of eye sockets. Nodal points, measurable and indispensable.
“Gotcha,” Metal whispered.
“Not quite.” Felicity’s hands left the keyboard and twisted together in her lap. Her hands were shaking and she didn’t want anyone to see. “I don’t think I’m going to have enough data points for a faceprint, not unless he looks up. I think he knew what he was doing with that hat. Let’s watch the footage in real time and see if his face shows up more clearly. Then we’ll go through that sector frame by frame.”
The three men grunted, eyes glued to the screen.
So she watched it all over again, living it all over again. Hands trembling as she watched a man try to kidnap her.
She saw herself pull away, stumble because she’d been sliced. Moving fast through the crowd, disappearing into the bathroom. A few minutes later the bomb alert. She’d been in the bathroom so she hadn’t seen this. There was no sound. One minute the concourse was filled with passengers walking, shopping, eating, talking. Then everyone froze to listen to the announcement and at the exact same moment, like starlings in flight, mouths opened in silent screams and they started rushing the stairs and the escalators, pushing and jostling. The only people who remained still were foreigners, who were watching everyone go crazy.
Instant panic, as if someone had stirred a stick in an anthill.
“Go over the attack again, but start earlier, and track both faces,” Metal said and she clicked back.
They watched on two screens from two different angles. She saw herself walk past the long lines waiting to go through security and into the arrivals area together with some of the other passengers on her flight.
The cameras switched to the street level.
“See that?” Metal pointed. Her attacker walked into the airport from outside, shaking snow off his coat. A few clicks later he had made his way upstairs. He positioned himself to one side, carefully watching the passengers as they passed by security and into the open area. Only this time her face and the attacker’s face were outlined. As she watched herself bebopping down the concourse like a puppy let off the leash, he followed. “He knew everything,” Metal said.
“Timed it just right too.” John frowned. “Didn’t spend a moment more than he had to in the airport in full view of the security cams. So he knew what flight she was on and timed it to be there when she exited.” He turned to Felicity. “Was your flight on time?”
“No, it was twenty minutes late. Pilot said he ran into head winds.”
“You didn’t have a suitcase with you so you didn’t check any luggage.”
“No. I just had my carry-on. When we landed I walked straight out of the plane.”
“Do you think he could have hacked into the system to see if the plane was late?” Metal asked her.
Felicity snorted. A chipmunk could have hacked into the system to see if the plane was late, let alone a human with half a brain.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Metal was biting his lips as if holding back a smile. “So what we know is that your attacker didn’t spend an extra second getting himself to where he could cross your path. He knew your flight was late so waited somewhere outside. He was smooth and efficient and wasn’t hanging around getting himself noticed. Which means he had intel on you.”
This was sort of scary. She nodded.
“Fast-forward it to where you get out of the bathroom and then slow it to real time and keep both of you on the screen.”
They watched as pandemonium broke out and she peeped her head out from the little bathroom atrium. It was weird watching the same thing from two entirely different points of view. The system kept them both in view but from two different cameras. When she made her way toward the stairs, cap on and head low, her attacker was in the cent
er, fighting the tide of panicked passengers, head swiveling to look for her.
She’d felt it. Even wounded and scared out of her mind she’d felt him seeking her out. But on the screen she could clearly see that he was never looking in the right direction as she made it down to street level and out the doors.
Outside, the cameras weren’t so well situated. She caught a glimpse of herself, huddled over in pain, staggering toward one of the ambulances. Then the attacker showed up on the other monitor, a real full face shot since in his frustration he lifted his face, forgetting the cameras.
“Freeze!” Metal shouted and her finger tapped to freeze, then zoom in. Instantly her program found the essential data points, a grid mapping his face. It looked like a veil with tiny lights where the threads of the veil had been dropped over his face, molding itself to him.
“Cool,” Jacko said admiringly.
“Never seen that actually done before,” John admitted.
Yeah, they had his face. Step one. Step two was finding out who the hell he was.
Felicity’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. “Okay. We can put in a request to send this faceprint to the proper authorities. Either the FBI whose ViCAP records are pretty extensive. Or maybe the CIA or NSA—they keep a good biometrics database. I can almost guarantee you that the answer will be no, we cannot use their system, that the answer will be weeks coming and that the very question will put ASI on some kind of watch list.”
“Or?” Metal asked, watching her closely.
“Or I hack,” she said simply. “And get the answer fast.”
“Hack,” Metal said decisively.
“Hack,” Jacko said.
John shook his head and smiled wryly. “Hack.” His eyes closed in what looked like pain.
“I’ll need my computer. No offense, guys, but your system is as leaky as the Titanic. Just about as old too.”
Again John shook his head. “No offense taken. Do you have your computer with you?”
She shot him a get real look and he raised his hands.
Felicity opened her laptop and flicked away a tiny mote of dust. The laptop had a dull surface and no logo. It wasn’t for sale anywhere in the world and its insides could send a man to the moon and back while hacking into Amazon. Completely untraceably too.
“Gentlemen, please,” she murmured and they turned their heads away as she entered the password and brought up a special program she’d written. It took a little concentration and about five minutes but at the end, she brought up an internal FBI page. It had the dark blue stripe across the top with faded stars marching across horizontally and the gold-and-blue FBI logo in the center. Below, NGI. Next Generation Identifier.The new FBI facial recognition database.
“You can turn your heads back now,” she said and the three homed in on her laptop screen.
“Christ!” For the first time she saw John drop his worldly CEO expression. “Did you just hack into the FBI computer system in a few minutes?”
“They have crap security,” she said as she imported the biometrics of her attacker into the system and let it run. “Actually, I could have used my own ID as a freelance service provider to the FBI but it would never have let me get this far into the system and it sure wouldn’t let me run FR. This is much easier and faster.”
“You’re scary,” Jacko said, but he was smiling.
She rolled her eyes. Jacko had piercings, a giant tribal tattoo visible under his thin T-shirt, and he was as big as a refrigerator. You could probably hit him with a baseball bat and the bat would break. And she was scary?
“Okay, here we go.” Thousands and thousands of faces flickered on the monitor, faces flying by under the data point template she’d established.
After ten minutes Felicity sat back. It usually didn’t take this long. FR software was pretty advanced and the newest generations eliminated obvious non matches and only brought possible matches into the system.
Douglas came back into the room and jerked his thumb at John. “You’re going to get a call—”
John’s cell pinged and everyone turned to him as he looked at his screen. “It’s Rajiv,” he said, raising his eyebrows to her. “Can I put him on speakerphone?”
Felicity shrugged. “Sure.”
Metal put his hand on her shoulder again, as reassurance, though she didn’t need it. She was lacking in many, many things and wasn’t too good in the real world, but in all things computer-related she felt strong and secure. Whatever Rajiv had to say wasn’t going to hurt her.
John pressed a button and lay the cell down. “Rajiv, my man. What’s your opinion of the software?”
“I want to hire this guy, John. Have him send his rèsumè stat and he can start work next Monday. I’d hire him sooner but I’m going to be at a security conference in Hong Kong. It’s like that software casts an invisibility cloak around your computer system. It was closed up tighter than a virgin’s—”
Metal leaned forward. “Rajiv—this is Metal. There’s a lady here.”
“Oops, sorry.”
Felicity smiled. “That’s okay. I’m the one who wrote the program so I won’t take offence.”
“Wow.” Silence from Rajiv. “A nerdette. The cool factor just went up, like, a billion points. Will you marry me, lady, whoever you are? In California, so your program goes into our joint property?”
Metal rolled his eyes. “No, she’s not going to marry you, Rajiv.”
“And she’s not going to work for you, either,” John added. “She’s going to work for us. And you can consult with us instead of the other way around from now on.”
Felicity stared at John but he just held up a long finger. Wait, he mouthed.
“Hmm. So what’s your name, mystery coder? And Metal, I haven’t ruled out marriage yet. Even if she is seventy years old with warts.”
“No warts, Rajiv,” Felicity said. “I’m glad you found the code interesting.”
“Frightening, more like it. So you used IEEE 802.1x? But it was an unusual variant.”
Felicity smiled. He was testing her. He had no idea what the program was based on. “Figure it out for yourself. Tool around with it a bit more, test it, see if you can crack it. You won’t but you might get some insights.”
Silence.
“Stanford?”
She shook her head, though he couldn’t see her. John had made sure the video camera was on him. It was very thoughtful of him.
“MIT.”
Rajiv moaned. “Oh God. I can’t believe you won’t marry me or work for me. John, treat her well because she’s going to make you a billion dollars. When the cyber apocalypse comes, your computer system will be the last thing standing.”
“Thanks, Raj.” When the call was over, John turned to her. “That’s a real offer, Felicity. We desperately need someone with your skills in the company and I think we can make you a very competitive offer. But I want you to understand something, and I need to make this perfectly clear.” He pointed a finger at her. “This job offer has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that you are in trouble. This company will work to find your attacker and the reason behind the attack and will protect you in the meantime. We would do it anyway because of Lauren.”
“And me,” Metal growled. His presence beside her was almost overwhelming. He was, yes, big and broad and strong but above all he gave the impression of his strength at her service. An impression so intense she felt as if she was being protected by an army, his army, conjured up for her.
“And Metal.” John nodded. “This company protects those close to us. So don’t think that you have to come to work for us as payment because that’s not how it works.”
“That’s not how what works?” a woman’s voice asked.
Felicity happened to be watching John’s face, and the change when he heard t
he woman was astonishing. John was a formidable figure, physically and mentally. She wouldn’t want him as an enemy. He was visibly a hard man, all business, and yet when he looked toward the door his face changed, softened.
The reason why was obvious. The woman walking toward them, arm in arm with Lauren, was an astonishing beauty, like something out of Vogue. She had a Grace Kelly kind of beauty and poise. Incredibly elegant and graceful. She was exactly the kind of woman who had tormented Felicity all her life. Felicity had been the kind of girl whose hair was always mussed and whose cotton socks fell down around her ankles and the popular girls had always made her pay for being so good in school. Not to mention the fact that she was a late developer and was contemplating a trainer bra when every other girl had mastered makeup and boys.
Things had been completely different at MIT, geek central, but Felicity was very aware of the fact that she lacked elegance and, really, social graces too. Most elegant women looked at her through a faint veil of contempt, as if she was somehow lacking in something essential to womanhood. Or even personhood. It was the reason she frequented nerds who didn’t give a damn what she was wearing or what designer purse she had or if her hair was combed or even if she was a Martian. She could have two heads and they wouldn’t notice.
So she instinctively prepared herself as the woman came closer but it turned out she didn’t need to brace or defend herself at all. The woman rushed to her and embraced her warmly. Felicity was so surprised it took her a moment to embrace her back, holding on to the incredibly soft, expensive material of her pastel-colored suit.
The woman pulled back and smiled at Felicity, her eyes wet. “Felicity. I finally have a chance to thank you for helping Lauren. She told me what you did for her. Any friend of Lauren’s is a friend of mine. I am so glad to meet you.” She bent to kiss Felicity’s cheek, soft, perfumed, real. “Thank you so much.” Her voice choked. Beside her, Lauren sniffed back a tear.
Whoa. “That’s really nice of you, ah—”
“Suzanne. Suzanne Huntington. John’s wife.” Well, Felicity didn’t need to be told that. John was looking at her as if she were sunshine itself after a long, cold winter.