“There has to be a back door to this place,” said Fang.
“There is,” Bao confirmed. “The side entrance we spotted when we were first surveying the warehouse. If we can ensure a big enough commotion out front, I’m sure we could slip in there without attracting too much attention, even if there are alarms.”
Fang laughed. “If we’re going that far, let’s go all the way. Set off every alarm they have—even if they follow up on some of them, they can’t handle all of them.”
“That’s perfect,” said Marisa. “Especially if we can force them to follow up on one or two in particular—breach the front door so dramatically that they can’t help but leave the back door for later.”
“There’s a gang war on their doorstep,” said Sahara. “Do we really need to add more distractions?”
“If they’re smart, the guards in the building aren’t involved with the gang war—they’re waiting for the building to be breached. As soon as we open the back door, they’ll head straight to it, unless we can convince them that another breach is more important.”
“I think we can pull that off,” said Sahara. “We’re going big, right? No pulling punches?”
“As big as we can make it,” said Marisa. She finished changing, and stepped back into the main room with Bao and Sahara.
“Looking good,” said Sahara. “So check this out: after our chase through the freeway the other night, I started studying autocar swarm algorithms, to see if there was any safer way we could have saved Anja. Like reviewing an Overworld mission—old habits die hard, I guess. I don’t think we can mess with the swarm, because it has too many backups—that’s the point of a swarm AI, to let each car support the others. But if we can cut a car off from the swarm, we could drive it right through the front door.”
“I love you,” said Fang.
Marisa felt suddenly short of breath, and she reached instinctively for her prosthetic arm. Her hand closed on the loose, empty leather of the jacket sleeve, which only made her feel more anxious. “You mean . . . drive a car? Manually?”
“Not in person,” said Sahara. “The controls are all electronic, so we can reroute them to anywhere.”
Fang was almost breathless. “Pick me pick me pick me!”
Marisa was still leery of the idea. “Those are dangerous.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” asked Fang. “I’m supposed to crash it.”
“What car are you planning to use?” asked Bao.
“I don’t have time to reroute the controls and hack the access, so it has to be one I already have the codes for,” said Sahara, and her face twisted into a malicious grin. “That leaves Marisa’s dad’s . . . or Omar’s.”
“Did I tell you I love you?” said Fang. “Because I love you.”
Marisa couldn’t help but mirror Sahara’s grin. “That is the first step of a very long and painful reckoning for that boy. I love it. But Fang, don’t hurt anyone—our goal is to reduce casualties, not add more.”
“Got it.”
“I just called the car,” said Sahara. “Turns out he doesn’t have it with him at the warehouse—he probably went in something less recognizable, trying to stay incognito. That means it’ll be here in about two minutes, and then it’ll be ten more minutes to get us to the warehouse. If I can work while it’s driving, I can do most of this hack job on the way, and then hand control over to Fang when we get there.”
“Twelve minutes might be too late,” said Marisa, clenching her teeth. “But—” She looked up. “I doubt we can get started much earlier than that anyway. Let’s do it.”
“We still need more distractions,” said Bao. “This plan only works if we overwhelm their security staff.”
“They’ll have plenty of online alarms,” said Jaya. “I can work on those from here.”
“You won’t get in,” said Marisa.
“I don’t have to,” said Jaya, “I just have to set off the alarms and distract them, right?”
“Protect yourself as much as you can,” said Marisa. “False servers, decoy accounts, bounced signals—everything you can possibly think of. These are the best coders I’ve ever come up against, and if they trace you, it will hurt.”
“Already working on it,” said Jaya. “Let me know when to pull the trigger.”
“What else?” asked Sahara. “I’m trying to remember the satellite images, and I’m pretty sure there were some proximity alarms around the fence.”
“Trip them all with nulis,” said Fang.
“No good,” said Marisa. “We used a nuli to spy on the building before—Lal will be ready if we try it again.”
“All the better to distract him,” said Bao. “Show him exactly what he’s expecting to see.”
“Good enough for me,” said Sahara. “If they’re looking at an army of nulis swarming in, that makes it easier for us to reach the building without being recognized.”