Free Binary: An Encrypted to Cipher Bridge Short Story by Carolyn McCray Page A

mainland. After the plague, though, which had hit China hard, the industry had swung back to the islands, since their population had been relatively isolated during the plague and had minimal losses.
    She could hear the legion of sewing machines stitching away all around her. There was only one shop that interested her, though, and that was the Lee & Yin Clothiers factory. After the fashion industry had abandoned the islands, Lee & Yin had diversified into other more unsavory pursuits. Drugs, gambling, and prostitution, to name a few. They had accumulated quite a syndicate and had used this factory as their cover. Now that clothes assembly was back in town, they weren’t beneath restarting their legitimate business.
    The part that Ronnie cared about was that they kept their secure servers on the property. There were hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bank accounts in that computer vault. There were accounts from the Caymans, Switzerland, and even Malta, the new super-rich tax haven country.
    And Ronnie meant to steal it all. She and Quirk had been pinging the system for weeks, probing its weaknesses. The security wasn’t all that much, actually. Thugs usually didn’t think in terms of geek. They thought a rotating password and a few security guards were enough. They thought through their security as if they would be the ones to assault their servers, not world-class hackers.
    Their mistake.
    On her back she carried a pack filled with high tech gear. She estimated it would take her seven minutes to transfer the funds once she was in the server room. Hundreds of millions of dollars, and they put up less than ten minutes’ worth of defenses. Gangsters, man.
    But she should be glad. Usually she was breaching large corporations’ systems, which were extremely well guarded. Those could take hours to crack—not minutes.
    But absconding with some spending cash wasn’t why she was in such a hurry. No, it was because Zach was going to be here. Not for a social visit, but on the job. Quirk had made sure that Warp had “discovered” their latest target. Zach was on the island to capture her.
    This is what her love life had descended to. Zach and her date night would be observed by every law enforcement service in America and filmed through satellite imagery and thermal scans.
    Awesome.
    All of which she was about to be late for.
    She hit the side door to the factory at full speed. She ran down the aisle between a hundred sewing machines. Thousands of dollars’ worth of silk and cashmere was being sewn into high end garments all around her.
    The clatter of the sewing machines reverberated against the unpainted walls. The sound set her teeth on edge. No one even looked up at the blonde kaivalagi running through their midst. All eyes were focused down at their sewing.
    These women worked under sweatshop conditions, yet their employers were sitting on several hundred million dollars in profit.
    You would think that Ronnie would be used to the cruelty that humans could deal to one another, yet she was still shocked at it each and every time. Her desire to hit the gang where it hurt doubled.
    The next door she went through held a floor-to-ceiling loom. The large shuttles clacked their way back and forth between the cotton fibers. This loom was making specialty prints. There were only a few employees here, mainly to make sure the loom didn’t get tangled or, worse, stop. This thing ran 24/7. According to Quirk, the loom itself made several grand a day for the syndicate.
    She rushed through that room and burst into the next room. The dying room. The air was filled with colored steam that rose from the vats.
    “Is he there yet?” Ronnie asked as she made her way to the staircase and headed up.
    “Of course he is. The FBI agent is punctual.”
    Ronnie just took the jab. Quirk wasn’t wrong. Zach was always on time, whereas Ronnie? Well, her tardiness wasn’t all her fault. Much blame could be laid at Quirk’s feet. How