Page 34 of The Honeymoon Hack

Using my key card, I opened the door to find Brie propped up in bed, laptop balanced on her thighs. Behind her on the wall, the window-like display showed a beach scene like the ones in the Grotto.

She looked up when I entered, her face brightening. “There you are! What took you so long?”

My brain stuttered. That smile. The way her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and her glasses sat near the end of her nose.

Wait. Why did you rush back?

Oh right.

I locked the door behind me. “You won’t believe where I’ve been.”

“Tell me.” She shifted the laptop and sat up straighter, her smile growing from the curiosity I knew was bubbling inside her.

“I got into The Deep.” I kept my voice low despite the noise machine’s protection.

“The what?” Her eyebrow—the infamous Reynolds eyebrow—shot up.

“Their highest security zone.” I crossed to the dresser where I’d stashed my clothes, pulling off my shirt and grabbing a clean T-shirt from the drawer. “Ronnie took me in.”

“And it’s not even your first day!” Her eyes widened. “How’d you manage that?”

“Pure luck. Some tech screwed up a power supply replacement, and Ronnie brought me along.” I provided her with the details about assisting him with server maintenance, how we’d been tracked by security after spending too long in one section, and finally, about the emergency that had given me access to the restricted area. “He told the head of security that he didn’t care I wasn’t supposed to go in.”

“What was it like in there?”

“Different from the other server areas. More cameras, fewer staff. Still only guards at the entrance, though.” I moved to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I called out to her, “Ronnie suggested I work with him directly this rotation.”

When I returned, Brie was nodding thoughtfully. “He has white-level access, right?”

“He does.” I sat on the edge of the bed opposite her. “Did you make any progress?”

“I may have found something with the authentication system,” she said, her fingers tapping absently on her keyboard. “But more importantly, I installed the Mnemis app on my phone.”

“It’s safe?”

“No way! But I partitioned my phone’s memory the same way I did with my laptop. The app is isolated on the public-facing section with zero communication to the hidden Reynoldssection.” She smiled, clearly pleased with herself. “I was going to update yours tonight, but you were gone longer than I’d expected.”

“Sorry about that.” I smiled back. My Brie was so clever. And using a little jab to disguise her worry about me being off on my own. “I assume you only did that after inspecting the code?”

“Of course!” Her eyes lit up—the same gleam she’d worn when we were kids and she’d figured out how to reprogram my Game Boy to run twice as fast. “The app’s not as bad as I expected. It’s got built-in tracking, captures screenshots periodically, and it uploads every text or call you make to a central server.”

“Corporate surveillance on steroids.”

“Exactly.” She leaned over, precariously balancing her laptop as she grabbed her phone from the bedside table. Once she had it, she woke the screen for me. “I created a modified version of the app that will let me intercept some of those data requests.”

“Smart.”

She tapped an area that looked like the background—but I knew full well she’d hidden something there. The screen shifted to one that only showed a single app—the Reynolds control hub. “If I switch to the Reynolds partition, the Mnemis app will think I’ve shut the phone off. But then I can send it fabricated data.”

“Such as?”

“Location pings that show us in the nearest approved areas. Audio loops of us having mundane conversations about work and the weather. Screenshots of us browsing innocent websites.” She paused, grinning. “Maybe I should throw in some phone call arguments about whose turn it is to do laundry, just to make it convincing.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“They want to spy on us? Fine.” She switched the phone back to its public-facing version. “But they’ll only see what I want them to see.”

“What about the rest of your tour?”