Page 32 of The Honeymoon Hack

“Blue to show they’re working, red to show it needs our attention?”

He grunted in affirmation and tapped his ID on the door in front of one of the servers that was glowing red. A green light blinked once, and the magnetic lock released with a soft click.

“Don’t bother trying your card,” he said, without looking at me. “Greenie badges don’t open anything in the server sections.”

Shit.Gideon hadn’t told us about that part, either. Was it one of the rules his team down here changed without advising the outside world? Our mission timeline didn’t allow for three months of probation. We’d need to find another way into these servers or accelerate our upgrades somehow.

“Who can access them?” I asked, trying to sound merely curious rather than calculating.

“Yellow badges and up. Different clearance levels for different sections.” He handed me a coil of fiber optic cable from the cart. “Hold this.”

As I took the cable, I let my gaze drift across our aisle—one row of many in the cavernous space. Slim surveillance domes were mounted at regular intervals along the ceiling grid. Rav would have access to the feeds. Had he been able to search for blind spots yet?

“The Bridge gets all the fancy equipment while we’re down here doing the actual work,” Ronnie grumbled, kneeling to access a lower server. “Half these kids don’t appreciate what they’ve got.”

Another technician arrived, stopping farther down the row, at the other red server. He nodded to Ronnie before unlocking the enclosure.

“Aren’t you on tomorrow’s incoming rotation, Ron?” The tech had warm skin and prominent cheekbones, with short black hair. “You just got here.”

“I heard one of your team was planning a cable upgrade before you all take off,” Ronnie shot back. “Figured I’d handle it now before someone makes a mess I’d have to fix later.”

The tech laughed. “Some of us manage to complete tasks without disasters.”

“Is that why I spent my last rotation fixing three separate ‘non-disasters’?” Ronnie retorted, but there was no real heat in it. Was his grumpy old man act just for show? “Jin, this is Will. New technician.”

Jin gave me a sympathetic grin. “Got stuck with Ronnie on day one? Someone up there hates you.”

“Don’t scare him off,” Ronnie said. “He’s actually competent. I need more people who can tell a router from a toaster.”

“High praise,” Jin chuckled. “Be careful, Will. Next, he’ll be asking you to help with his weekend projects.”

After Jin wheeled his cart away, I asked, “How long have you been with Mnemis?”

“Six years,” he said, deftly splicing cables together. “Came from Google’s Singapore facility before that.”

“Why’d you leave them?”

Without looking at me or answering, he held out his hand. “Crimper.”

It was all a test. I handed him the tool as though I were aiding in surgery.

For the next hour, I assisted Ronnie with various maintenance tasks, well beyond the single cable upgrade we’d originally come to the server room for.

“Do you always work so much before your shift starts?” I eventually asked.

Ronnie shrugged. “Equipment doesn’t know what day it is.”

That must have been his way of saying he regularly worked early, and it explained why he’d loaded up the cart. This was a man who loved his job.

“There’s a hurricane approaching,” I ventured as we moved to another aisle. “Any special protocols for severe weather?”

“We’ll run some extra tests on the backup generators, but that’s standard procedure. Dorian hit in 2019 during my first year.Thatwas stressful, but Mnemis barely blinked.” He parked the cart and paused before unlocking the next server rack. “We were still setting up The Deep back then.”

That sounded ominous. “The Deep?”

“The resort topside was decimated,” he said, either ignoring or not hearing my question. “I was afraid they’d abandon the resort and shut the data center down, but money can fix a lot of things. The repairs only took them eight months.”

Part of me wanted to find out more about The Deep. But I had a job to do.