Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Chapter 4

4

This is where things get tricky. First, the alarm.

I’m in the wiring shaft, with all the dust and grunge and probably a constant thin rain of asbestos, right outside the access door to Butterfly Star’s offices. The alarm cable’s pretty clearly marked. It’s a gray cable stamped VIGILANTE SECURITY, like they’re going to come after me with a six-shooter and a noose. Deke always says—

said—

Never mind.

You can’t just cut the wire. Losing the heartbeat signal triggers an alarm back at the security company HQ and activates the local fallback system. Lose both signals, the police get sent out. I have a massively illegal 4G jammer to block the backup, but I would need to get into the office for it to be any use. Disabling this alarm won’t stop the fire alarm, that’s on a whole separate circuit, but I have no intention of burning this place down.

There’s lots of ways to take care of the alarm, lots of toys you can buy from hard-to-find specialists, but I like artificial heartbeats. I slice the plastic sheath over the wire, the long way, exposing the eight color-coded wires within.

The drab gray plastic-cased bypass unit’s about the size of an old-fashioned pager with a power button and two little lights. Eight thin wire leads trail from its bottom, each uniquely color-coded, each ending in an alligator clip.

The colors on the bypass unit leads match those on the alarm cable wires.

Even in this dim, dismal lighting, I only need about ten seconds to magnetically stick the bypass to a convenient iron strut, clip each wire to its mate, verify they’re secure, and push the button.

The bypass silently analyzes the signal from the alarm box inside Butterfly. In about two minutes, its LED flashes green three times and goes dark.

I snip the alarm wire right above the alligator clips. The bypass unit will silently take over, transmitting the Butterfly heartbeat to the security company.

A really paranoid Butterfly would have a double heartbeat, one going in and one going out. I’m sure management can’t imagine anyone stealing their data, especially since nobody knows about it.

Nobody but the researchers, that is.

Researchers like my contact.

No, I won’t tell you who. Sheesh!

So: the door.

Butterfly’s put a second lock on the access door. The Schlage will take three minutes, maybe less, but the big cylindrical Maximus—

—has already been popped.

From this side.

The access door to the forty-ninth floor isn’t quite shut all the way.

Someone’s already broken into Butterfly Star.