Caldwell watched the text message scroll across the bottom of the AR glasses.

“Sorry for the delay I ran into some problems.”

It was Mei Lin. Caldwell couldn’t respond on the communications channel without drawing attention to himself but he figured Mei Lin would be able to see him manipulating the Kai Shing blueprints on the console in the Range Rover. There were five technicians in the control room, which looked like it had a maximum capacity of about thirty. Caldwell figured the other technicians were probably still out to lunch or off duty. Many data centers ran a thin roster to save costs. There was a bank of digital international clocks along the front wall above more displays showing the vital signs of the NEXT data center.

“I know you can’t respond but make it snappy. I just realized that the central government facility that broadcasts digital information is just across the road in the Murray building. It’s just a matter of time before they figure somebody is broadcasting on their restricted frequency. It’ll take them all of ten seconds to pinpoint my whereabouts. They can probably spot me from their window.”

Caldwell resisted the urge to respond and allowed the message to scroll out of sight. He was too close. He walked to a bank of terminals at the front of the control room. One of the nameplates said Chan Ming Fai in English and traditional Chinese characters. Caldwell took a wild guess that it was the same Ah Fai collecting a parcel at reception. What were the odds on there being two Ah Fais out of thirty? Slim to none, he figured, although Ah Fai was a popular Hong Kong name. Caldwell sat down at an empty terminal as far away from Ah Fai’s worktop as possible, facing away from the wide glass window giving out to the reception hall. There was another text message from Mei Lin.

“I couldn’t copy the database. They have somehow disabled replications. This is a broadcast directly out of the hack to the Kai Shing system. I am still connected to their system.”

Just what they needed, Caldwell thought. Three possible points of failure. He could get caught trapped in the control room. Kai Shing could discover that somebody was logged into their building databases or the Hong Kong government’s Information Services Department could discover Mei Lin broadcasting illegally on their private spectrum. Caldwell started typing on the keyboard of the terminal. The NEXT screensaver disappeared to reveal a login prompt. The system logged users out after a specified time interval. He had to check the blueprints.

“Twenty-eight,” Caldwell whispered into the microphone embedded in the glasses looking around to see if he had attracted anyone’s attention. The AR unit blinked, signaling that it was receiving the audio signal. Nothing happened.

“Twenty-eight,” he whispered, this time a little louder. Still nothing. He cast a furtive glance around the control room behind. Everything seemed fine.

“Access blueprint.” Nothing.

“Access blueprint twenty-eight.” Nothing happened.

“Twenty-eighth floor.” Nothing.

“Shit!”

“Access blueprint twenty-eight.” This time Caldwell spoke in Cantonese. Accessing blueprint for the twenty-eighth floor appeared in traditional Chinese characters.

Bingo. The blueprint for the twenty-eighth floor slid out of the stack, spun on its axis and magnified itself several times. He could scroll in any direction simply by moving his head. There was a small commotion in the control room. A group of technicians had just entered the room. Ah Fai, the technician who had walked over to the receptionist, was among them. Ah Wah was nowhere to be seen. He was probably still slumped in the toilet. That was the fourth point of failure.

Ah Fai was showing his colleagues something he had just received in the post. By the wolf whistles coming from the back of the room, it sounded like pornography. Caldwell turned his attention to the job at hand. The blueprint was extremely detailed. Caldwell could see icons and diagrams for everything from the data cables beneath the flooring and in the ceiling to the drainage system for the aquarium in the hall. The blueprint showed a thick bunch of cables coming out of the floor and disappearing into a big shaded square in the corner of the blueprint. Caldwell glanced at the corner. There was a solid enclosure in the corner with a huge black IBM server sitting in there with tons of network cables coming out of the floor and disappearing round the back. It was the size of a large refrigerator.

Caldwell moved his head forward to get closer to the label below the symbol for the server enclosure indicated in the blueprint. The label read: NEXT Internal Directory Server. Bingo. Caldwell guessed it was the server that held the usernames and passwords of all NEXT employees, the usernames and passwords they used to log into their terminals.

One problem though, the IBM did not have a monitor attached. The technicians could probably remotely call the server’s system up from their terminals. Caldwell stood up and walked towards the server. The technicians were still looking at Ah Fai’s package. Caldwell stared at the server. It was a monster of a machine. The good thing about these gigantic IBM machines was that they usually had a small LCD text screen that indicated what major tasks the machine was currently performing and the status of the machine. Where the hell was it? Any one of the four points of failure could be unraveling that very minute and Caldwell realized it was just a matter of time before the technician in the washroom came to his senses. He needed to get the hell out of there fast.

There was a sliding cover on the front of the server. Caldwell slid it open to find a yellow LCD screen. It read: “Server Idle ...” Caldwell looked behind him. Ah Fai was walking over to his seat. Caldwell pretended to be studying the screens above. Ah Fai started logging in to his console. Caldwell could see him logging in because the IBM’s LCD read: User mfchan logging in on IP: 2223.2234.0.1... Password: lovebobo4ever ... Authenticating ... Authenticated. Server idle ...

“What do you think you are you doing?” a voice asked just behind his shoulder.

Caldwell turned round to see the technician who had unwittingly let him into the control room just a few minutes earlier. He didn’t give the technician time to react. He was already heading for the door.

“Stop him,” Caldwell heard the technician shout but he was too late. By the time the other technicians realized what was happening, Caldwell was just a few strides from the door. They were up on their feet anyway, swivel chairs spinning randomly across the room. Caldwell pressed madly on the button in the recess next to the control room doors. The doors slid open, surprising a technician with his hand in the biometric palm reader. As Caldwell rushed to the escalators, the alarm bells were already sounding. On the augmented reality overlay the blueprint for the twenty-eighth floor shrank and retracted back into the stack. The stack disappeared in a cloud of pixels. A text message scrolled across the blank screen.

“I am out of Kai Shing system. Shit has hit the fan here. A Hong Kong Police unit van just pulled up to the building. Get your ass down here quick.” Had Ah Wah come to and sounded the alarm?

A sea of silver and purple windbreakers came rushing towards the elevators. The doors opened and closed. Caldwell was in the elevator alone. He hit the ground floor button. He was in the NEXT Tower lobby a few seconds later. Hong Kong Police officers were all over the lobby. Some were swarming into the lifts. Others rushed past him into the elevator mistaking him for a technician. Caldwell glanced at the large screen showing the control room. It was pandemonium upstairs. Security guards had materialized from other floors. Guys in windbreakers were pointing at the lifts. The security guard in the lobby was taking all this in on his bank of security monitors like someone engrossed in an action flick. Nobody gave him a second glance. The silver and purple NEXT windbreaker was proving useful.

Caldwell walked out of NEXT Tower into blinding sunlight. The Range Rover was sitting out there in the front drive, its engine purring. At least four Hong Kong Police vans were parked right up against the revolving front door. Mei Lin had never been such a welcome sight. Caldwell climbed into the passenger seat and they inched slowly out into Central afternoon traffic to avoid suspicion.

“Did you get it?” she asked, glancing sideways at him with a worried look on her face.

Caldwell was still too shaken to say anything. He simply logged on to cyberspace on the Range Rover’s console and typed in the IP of Chan Ming Fai’s console. The NEXT logo came up with a login prompt below it. Caldwell was now oblivious to everything around him, including Mei Lin and the Hong Kong traffic. He had entered the self-contained world of the hacker. At this precise moment, nothing else mattered. He entered mfchan as the login username and the technician’s corny password: lovebobo4ever. Caldwell found himself remotely logged into Ah Fai’s terminal. He quickly called up a network schema.

Several dozen computer icons filled the screen, all linked with thin green or red lines. The green lines he figured were machines for which Chan Ming Fai had automatic authenticated access. He didn’t need a username and a password to login to those. Caldwell scrolled through the long list of icons and found what he was looking for. The NEXT data traffic monitoring server. He clicked the icon. The user interface of the remote computer appeared in a small window. Caldwell queried the logging database to return data transfer logs for the past month, sorted by size.

“Shit. I was afraid of that.”

“Afraid of what?” Mei Lin asked, wondering what was going on.

Caldwell continued typing away on the Range Rover’s tiny keyboard. He created a user account on one of the servers on the network and then deleted all log entries relating to his intrusion. He also disabled logging so that the server wouldn’t record his exit.

“Chan Ming Fai just hacked himself,” Caldwell said to a perplexed Mei Lin as he logged out of the Range Rover’s console.

“What the hell just happened?” Mei Lin asked, stepping on the gas.