Generation of Liars (17 page)

“Alice? Is everything okay?” Ben
panted when he came on the line.

“Yeah, Ben, everything is fine.”

“I got nervous when the front desk
said I had an urgent call from a girl named Alice. I thought you were hurt.”

“I’m not hurt or anything. I just
didn’t have any other phone number for you and I figured I could catch you on
shift at the hospital. I just wanted to tell you that our date needs postponing
because a new flight just got added to the schedule. Yours truly was selected
to be the peanut pusher.”

“Oh. That’s fine, Alice. If duty
calls, what can you do? I would hate to think of all those hungry passengers
going without peanuts just so I could enjoy you. Let me know as soon as you get
home, alright?”

“I promise you I will. I’ve got to
go now, drink service is about to begin and if I’m not quick about claiming a
refreshment cart I’ll get stuck with the one with squeaky wheels.”

“Oh wait, Alice?”

“Yes?”

“May I ask what rabid jungle they
are flying you off to now?”

“Actually, it’s a concrete jungle.
New York City.”

“Sounds lovely.” I heard the
crackle of a name being paged over the hospital intercom in the background.
“That’s for me, gotta go. See you soon, Alice.”

 Chapter Eleven: The Big Apple

T
HE
GLITTERING BLOOM of New York City was blinding from behind the glass of the
egg-shaped airplane
window at my cheek.
Everything down below looked so neon compared to Paris. When the plane touched
the tarmac at JFK, I felt a stab of dread run through my body.

Motley had a rental car waiting for
us in the airport parking lot with the keys resting on the driver’s seat.
Rabbit got behind the wheel and drove us into Manhattan, where we checked into
our room at the Hilton.

I rolled my suitcase across the
airy lobby, towards the row of elevators that led up and down from the
penthouse suites. I rooted my finger to my chin and turned to Rabbit.

“Rabbit?”

“Yes, Alice?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that
the concierge only handed you one room key. Were you planning to slum it on the
bench beneath the baby grand piano in the lobby tonight?”

“No, Alice, we’re sharing a room.
Motley wants us completely connected the whole trip.”

I let my bags drop from my hands
onto the floor like boulders. “I don’t think so. I demand my own room.”

“Alice,” Rabbit gritted out,
“you’re making a scene. A girl on mission to subvert the efforts of the United
States Government should not throw a tantrum in public.”

I knew he was right, so I hooked my
hand back into the handles of my bags and huffed out a, “Fine.”

“Our room is on the seventh floor.”
He thumbed the elevator button.

“Listen,” I said. From the shiny
silver doors, our blurry reflections looked back at us as though from the
surface of a murky mirrored lake. We were just a couple of kids staring back. I
was wearing too much makeup and Rabbit still had traces of acne. “You need to
understand that I haven’t forgiven you for snitching on me to Motley.”

“We need to put that aside for right
now, Alice. There are bigger fish to fry. I just hope we can trust you on this
job.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I hope Pressley
Connard doesn’t show up again and convince you to tie tongues with him instead
of properly destroying the Cibix servers.”

The elevator chimed and the doors
opened, sliding our reflections away. “That is so ridiculous, Rabbit,” I said,
stepping inside, spinning like a dervish. “And you should be one to talk about
indiscretions, taking every opportunity to get touchy feely with that stray
geisha girl at Etienne’s masquerade party like you’re some kind of nerdy
playboy.”  

“Alice, forget about our feelings
for the time being. We need to put our bickering aside for this job and just
focus on getting it done.” After the elevator let us off on the seventh floor,
we hoofed it to the room without another word.

“After you,” I told Rabbit when
reached the door. “Since you have the key. Since you always seem to have the
key to every place we go. I guess that’s how being the favorite works.”

“You just don’t quit, do you,
Alice?” He slid the cardkey into the door and pushed it open. I stormed inside
and noted that the room was spacious, neat, and it had a fully stocked mini
bar. I plopped my bags on the floor and got to unscrewing bottle caps. I
carried an armful of bottles and an ice bucket into the bathroom with me and
filled the tub for a bath. After I had been inside the bathroom with the door
closed for a half-hour, Rabbit knocked. “Alice?”

“What do you want?” My voice
reverberated against the tiles in the bath stall, and I realized that I had
slurred my words.

“Please don’t get sloppy drunk and
pass out in there. We can’t do the mission against Project Nine tomorrow if
you’ve drowned. If you’re hung over it’s probably all gonna go to pot too.”

“I’m relaxing,” I shouted back.
“What do you want from me?”

“We really need to do some planning
tonight.”

“Door’s open.”

Rabbit pushed his way into the
steamy bathroom and his mouth dropped open. “My gosh, Alice, it must be
two-hundred degrees in that water. And your skin’s as pink as a devil’s. Is
that an empty champagne bottle floating next to you in the tub?”

I tugged the shower curtain shut.
“Mind your eyes.”

I heard him drop the lid on the
toilet and sit down. “We really need to prepare for tomorrow.”

“What was in your hand when you
walked in?”

“These,” Rabbit said, fanning a
stack of papers, “are the building blueprints for the Cibix world headquarters
building on Avenue of the Americas.”

“So we’re really going to storm the
headquarters like you said on the plane?”

“No, Alice,
we
aren’t. Just
you.”

“Of course,” I said, sarcastically,
as I leaned back to let my hair dunk into the water. “Let me guess? You will
get to monitor my every move during the job from a safe distance?”

“I’ll be supervising, yes. Right
now I am working on planning your route for tomorrow.”

“How the heck am I going to storm
through a highly-secured corporate office undetected?”

“Most major corporations have
servers that do an automatic save-and-refresh routine when user traffic is low.
This is usually between two o’clock and three o’clock A.M., when most
employees, even the most dedicated, are sleeping and not checking their email
or accessing databases. The backup-and-refresh period is when servers are most
vulnerable.”

“Are we going to break into the
building during that quiet window while the Project Nine servers are down?’

“Nope. We aren’t going to break in
at all. You’re reporting for work as a Cibix employee in the morning.”

I picked up the
empty wine bottle that was floating around in the tub and blew into it like a
conch. “Funny, I don’t remember submitting a résumé.”

“I am going to exploit the
vulnerable window in the middle of the night to hack into the system and
manipulate a new employee profile for you. This will allow you to move freely
inside the building tomorrow.”

“Don’t you think the people at
Cibix will catch on once nobody remembers hiring me?”

“Cibix has fifteen-hundred
employees that report to their headquarters, in addition to another six
thousand worldwide, so being an unfamiliar face won’t automatically make you
suspicious.” His eyes followed the soapy trail from the empty wine bottle back
to me in the tub. “As long as you don’t do something that draws attention and
makes you look
suspicious
.”

“What?” I asked incredulously. But
I knew what. I was floating alongside an empty wine bottle in a smoldering tub
the night before our most daring job yet.

“Just try and sober up and get some
sleep tonight.”

Once Rabbit got up and left, I got
out of the tub, toweled off, and padded to my bed. The hot bath and bottle of
wine made it easy to fall asleep. Liquid sedation was the only way I was able
to fall asleep, since I was full of anxiety over being back in America.

*   
*    *

The walls rattled. My eyes flew
open. The fuzzy-flowered Thomas Kinkade painting hanging in a heavy oak frame
above my bed teetered on its balance.

Rabbit slammed the door shut behind
him on his way back in the room, jarring me awake, the world spinning behind my
sleepy eyes. By the time I remembered where I was, Rabbit was standing over me
with a huge, double-handled Bergdorf’s bag dangling from his skinny fingers.

“I have a little gift for you,
Alice.”  

I popped up in bed and grabbed the
air for the bag like it was catnip. Once I had it in my grasp, I tore it open,
only to be disappointed when I pulled out a black two-piece business suit.
 “A drab black suit? Yuck. If you want to motivate me out of this bed,
you’re going to need to do better.” I sunk back under the covers. Outside the
window, sounds funneled up from the streets below, and I could hear a car alarm
going off and the sound of rain drumming against the building. The hotel room
was full of crisp air-conditioned air.

“That suit is perfect for where
you’re going today, Alice.”

“Should I assume this frumpy
undertaker’s outfit is the Cibix standard uniform?”

“We have to keep things nice and
bland for the office today. It’s called being professional.”

I slid down off the bed and stepped
over the crumpled Bergdorf’s bag on my way to the kitchenette, where I brewed
strong coffee, which I mixed with what little liquor was left from the mini
bar. “See,” I began to pontificate, “this is why I don’t work in corporate
America. We have a
much
freer dress code in our line of work.” I chugged
the coffee and dumped the empty cup in the sink. There were complimentary
little wrapped sticky buns so I ate them before hitting the shower. When I was
done, I styled my hair conservatively and applied a light coat of makeup. I
called out to Rabbit through the door sliver, “Can you pass me the suit?”
 

“Here.” The bag pushed through the
door.

I snatched it from his hands and
quickly got dressed and stepped out of the bathroom. “I’m ready to be briefed,”
I announced.

“Have a seat and I will brief you
on today’s job.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and
leaned into Rabbit, who was sitting on a plush arm chair that was pushed next
to the window. “What’s with all this?” I noticed that Rabbit was holding a
stack of odd objects in his hands. “Did you rob a spy shop or something?”

“Here is your employee badge.” He
handed me a laminated plastic badge. “It has a built-in key fob to open all standard
access doors within Cibix HQ, plus it is programmed for extra access according
to your department.”

“Did you go out and print this
badge this morning? I knew you left too early for Bergdorf’s to be open.” I was
spinning the badge in front of my nose to get a look. It had my photo paired
with the name, Debra Light, with a caption underneath that read, Finance
Department. “Oh geez, Rabbit, did you have to go and make me a boring
accountant?”

“Accounting is the most believable
department for our purposes. I played around with the Cibix human resources
database, and, as of today there is a Debra Light, Junior Account, level II,
Funds and Accounting for Research and Development.”

I screwed up my face. “Translation
por
favor
.”

“Basically that means you allot the
gimme money to the researchers on new programs. Including Project Nine. That
will give you access to the server room for Project Nine, you know, in case you
need to check up on how the allotted money is helping the software engineers’ progress.”

“I can’t believe you made me a bean
counter,” I grumbled.

 Rabbit handed me a steno pad, a
blue ballpoint pen, and some legitimate looking spread sheets. He explained
these would help me look like I was in the middle of something important so that
people wouldn’t stop me in the halls and try to make chitchat. I shoved the Bic
behind my ear, straightened my shoulders, and did my best to look like a
bookish accountant crushed under the giant hamster wheel of corporate America.

“So what do you think? Do I look
the part?” I asked, proudly jutting my shoulders. “Do I look like some office
bimbo named Debra Light?”

Rabbit pursed his lips so that they
resembled a balloon knot. “Alice, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. Why are you
looking at me like that?” He was looking at me like I was a freak.

“Geez, Alice. You messed with your
hair again. I told you to quit dyeing it before it all falls out or something.”

“Rabbit, what the heck are you
talking about? I didn’t touch my hair. It’s exactly the same as it was when I
woke up this morning.”

“You added a blue streak. I can see
it.”

“Blue? Rabbit you are seriously
developing a blood clot on your eye from staring at computer screens all day
because I did not dye my hair blue.”

“Alice. Listen to me very
carefully. Your hair is blue.”

I shot up from the bed and ran to
the bathroom mirror. I let out an awful gasp when I saw my reflection. Rabbit
was right. There was a blue skunky streak among my front strands of hair. I
reached behind my ear and pulled out the pen and saw that the tubular clear
plastic spine of it was dripping vines of blue ink. “Great, my stupid pen
exploded. Now how am I going to fit in with corporate America?”

Rabbit leaned into the doorway, the
thin, gawky profile of his chin waning like a crescent moon behind my
reflection in the mirror. “We just have to go forward, Alice. There’s no time
to fix it. Maybe nobody will notice.”

I dropped the pen into the sink,
letting the ink seep contagiously over everything, and stormed to the bed.
“What else do I need to know for the mission?”