# Silhouette

_10 seconds_. The knowledge appeared directly into her consciousness, her console placing it there via its on-board brain-net. The absolute certainty of her window was bone-deep in her, and she moved with easy confidence. The door opened. Three steps to the access console. A quick tug with the right tool and the panel came off. She placed her finger on the circuitry beneath and her vision swam with a flood of new data, filtered through her system.

_7 seconds_. The datastream resolved into a simple ice pattern; Silhouette's breaker suite cut through it without her needing to intervene. She was in. Looping the camera feed was simple. Looping the motion sensors, thermographic feed, and EM variance grid was a little more complicated. But doable.

_5 seconds_. She left a crawler on the server, not expecting it to find anything-hardline segregated from the rest of the network, would be her guess. Jacking out, she sprinted down the hall, thankful for the suit's subtle augmentation. Around the corner. The door to the stairwell opened as she approached, her elD now recognized as a superuser.

_2 seconds_. Out onto the 32nd floor, hard left, and there was the door. It opened as well, and she slipped through.

_0 seconds_. She crossed to the window, checked to make sure her escape line was in place. Just in case. Then she waited. She amused herself examining the office. The old-style 2D photographs of wife, kids, something that might have been a dog. A violin behind glass. A picture of the occupant; she could work up a profile based on this office alone, maybe sell it upstalk to the competition.

Finally, the door opened, and the woman stepped through. She squawked, spilling her YucaBean on the floor, narrowly missing her tailored suit. “What are you doing here?”

“I like to meet face-to-face,” said Silhouette, ignoring the accusatory tone. The woman tossed her now almost empty YucaBean cup into a wastebasket, and stepped forward and tapped the opaque faceplate of Silhouette's helmet. “So you say.”

Silhouette dropped the folder on the faux wood desk. “It's all there.”

“Alright,” said the woman. She touched the folder, went behind the desk, and pulled out a smaller envelope of her own. “Your bonus, as agreed.” Silhouette took the reluctantly proffered envelope and tucked it into her suit's only pocket. “You didn't have to penetrate all my security and surprise me in my own damn office!” The woman brushed invisible flecks of coffee from her suit. “Couldn't we meet in a park, a garage? I'm your client!"

“Today you’re my client. Tomorrow, you might be my target.” Silhouette turned to go. "By the way, there's a ten-second downtime on your security AI after a power-cycle. Might want to look into that.”