The Daedalus Code Read Free

spike. What can you tell us about the content of that interaction?”
    “Who?” His face tensed as he looked at each agent.
    “Ariadne,” Aegeus said. “I’ll send you her bio.” He pulled up the girl’s record and sent it across to Mouse’s PR screen. “Bright kid, with a bright future. Was working on AIs when she graduated from uni. Had a sweet job lined up. Next minute she’s discussing things with the likes of you. Seems out of character.”
    Mouse’s eyebrows twitched slightly as he scanned her record. “I wasn’t here at that time. It wasn’t my shift.”
    “Then why is your ID all over her interaction matrix like a cheap pornbot?” Aegeus said.
    “Hang on a second.” Mouse walked back into his tube and indicated for them to follow. Phaedra and Aegeus stood behind him and watched the screens.
    He pulled up the video feed at the time of Ariadne’s appearance at the club. 9:07 p.m. Wednesday.
    “Is that her?” Mouse asked.
    The video clip showed a tall, dark-haired woman in a form-fitting grey suit—clearly tailored by a post-tenth-level clothing supplier. She walked to the center of the dance floor and looked around.
    Aegeus nodded. “That’s her. She’s a looker, all right.”
    “She looks nervous,” Phaedra said, noting the way her body tensed and how she wrung her hands.
    “She’s waiting for someone,” Aegeus added. “Can you scrub it forward?”
    “Sure.” Mouse ran his finger in a sliding motion from left to right and the video double-tracked.
    “Wait.” Phaedra pointed to a man sitting in a booth. “Who’s that she’s with?”
    “That’s Mikos, my understudy. He works the early shift. Although he should have been in here doing his job instead of schmoozing hot girls in the private booths.”
    Mouse pulled up another program and entered some dates and login credentials. “He signed in with my ID for some reason…that goddamned little fucking weasel.” Mouse kicked out at the tube. A dull thrum reverberated up the glass.
    “How much do you know about him?” Phaedra asked after a few seconds.
    “Nothing,” Mouse said. “All of us in the security industry keep our lives secret. Only things people know about us are the facts we choose to reveal. It’s imperative in our line of work to protect ourselves as much as possible. Information is our lifeblood, and information about ourselves is highly sought after.”
    “By whom?” Phaedra asked.
    “As if that’s pertinent to your investigation,” Mouse said.
    “Humor us,” Aegeus said.
    Mouse sighed. “Tech corporations, governments, information companies. Our skills are, or were, in high demand. We often have access to secrets, data and algorithms that could uncover huge revelations on seemingly abstract datasets. If we don’t protect ourselves, every two-bit hacker would be jumping us for an epic payday.”
    “So how did this guy get your ID so easily?” Aegeus said. “I thought you were some kind of hotshot security hacker.”
    “Well, give me a minute and I’ll find out.”
    “Why’d he need to spoof your ID?” Phaedra asked.
    Mouse shrugged. “Trying to cover his tracks, I suppose.”
    He ran his fingers across the glass with a blurring speed. Code and graphical interface elements streamed as quickly as he could react. “There,” he said, pointing to a record. “He spoofed my login, must have had a key logger tracking my access. Nothing else seems out of place though. Obviously just wanted to hide his meeting with this girl.”
    “Not very bright, is he?” Aegeus said. “What with the cameras and all.”
    “He doesn’t know about this one,” Mouse said. “He knew about the main cameras, hence the private booth he chose. It’s obscured by a couple of architectural beams. To get round that, and add another level of security, I keep a few others hidden and on a completely separate network protocol.”
    Phaedra pondered on the meeting. As far as they knew, this guy was the last to be seen with the