Getting to the door is the easy part.
The symposium Jason organized has been running for weeks. The meeting at the compound has been going on for days. Harry Gale is a big deal, and experts in the field are coming and going all the time to conference with their fellows and review new data. More people showing up won’t raise any eyebrows.
There are DNA-detecting laser scanners on the property, snooping for specific individuals or familiar genetic patterns such as Atlantean ninja, but John’s prosthetics will tend to prevent theirs from being picked up. And the scanners aren’t smart enough to notice someone who isn’t producing enough of a sample to register.
An unfortunate security flaw, Alycia muses. She can’t gloat too much - she had a hand in its creation, and so she shares in the blame for this oversight.
Their credentials are some of Alex’s best work, and that’s saying something. The hacker even thoughtfully provided a phone and email tap, in case somebody tries to forward a message to the real people they’re emulating. And so it is that Doctors So-and-So and What’s-Her-Face, joined by three undergraduates, Forgettable Face Guy, Bored Being Here Bitch, and Obsessive Data Nerd, are buzzed through without incident.
The hard part will be inside, where the people are. But isn’t that always the case?
Past the front door, Alycia glances around, taking in the sights, playing the part of bedazzled outsider when visiting the Quill compound for the first time. Specific eye movements, specifically timed, will convey the impression of newness. There will be people to fool later, some of them hypergeniuses, but the facade must be kept up at all times.
She’s reasonably sure that of the others, only Nono and Alex have any working knowledge of the compound - Alex from spying on the Menagerie for almost a year, Nono from her fiction. She thinks she can trust Alex’s general insolence to excuse the lack of interest in their surroundings, and Nono’s generally wide-eyed enthusiasm at anything spy-related. But there’s still plenty of reason to keep a close eye on them, especially Nono.
Speaking of hypergeniuses - there’s one, Herr Doktor Uhrwerk from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Alycia offers felicitous congratulations for a recent paper, and the scientist’s pride at recognition blinds him just long enough for her to move on. This is the first test of the prosthetics and voice adjustments - will they attract the attention of someone with a superhuman intellect? She’ll know in a few minutes.
She’s greeted by someone from the staff, no doubt summoned by the door’s computer. At least it’s not Jason - thank god, he’s probably too busy to play host right now. She gives the cover story. The woman - Barbara, Alycia thinks - frowns, and Alycia springs her prepared anecdote about a similar incident. The incident itself was real enough, based on something from her father’s work, but the plausibility of it serves to erode Barbara’s doubts.
“Well, it’s for a good cause,” the woman says at last. “Just please introduce yourself to Mr. Quill and explain the situation.”
“Thank you, I will do so,” Alycia says with a smile.
There’s another problem, still unsolved. How does Jenny Byrne keep getting in here?
Unless Jason has been engaging in deliberate trysts with the spy - a recurring thought that her anxiety has gifted her, despite literal years of evidence to the contrary - it’s unlikely that she has some kind of backdoor into the Quill security system. Alycia knows Jason has been through the system a dozen times or more, methodically scrubbing out anything he finds that doesn’t belong. Even Jason himself was locked out at one point, when he enacted his so-called Sewer Lizard protocol. Alycia is still not quite certain how that name came to be, nor what it entails, but it was something he’d had prepared since at least the time of the original Menagerie.
She’s already thought of another option. Jenny Byrne was co-opted into working for Pyrrhus, through Doctor Achilles Chin’s subordinate, Dr. Sidorov. But Pyrrhus, as a mental fusion of the Quill and Chin families, would know everything both Byron and Jason knew. What if Pyrrhus granted Jenny some sort of extra-secret backdoor, something that would elude Jason’s routine sweeps? It was in character for Byron Quill to keep secrets from his son, and to enforce his will over Jason through technology.
The man was a pig. What was done to him was right and just, Alycia tells herself, in a moment of bitter recollection.
She performs another of her routine checks on her team. Nono, to her credit, is playing her part well. She’s bossing the “undergrads” around, and her body language and tone of voice are those of a superior.
The prosthetics are visible to her senses, keyed up as they are by a lifetime of training, and Alycia feels a sinking feeling. These disguises will fool most people, but anyone raised like me - him, for example - they’ll see through it.
It’s just as well. She has no intention of facing Jason Quill tonight.
If Jenny is getting in, she isn’t doing it through the front door, or within range of the scanners. Alycia is reasonably certain Jason has DNA traces of her from prior visits - “or other sources,” her anxiety tells her - and has probably programmed the laser scanners already. Those are a new system, not likely to fall over if presented with some hypothetical Byronic backdoor.
Emma’s infil-exfil plan (“heist planning”, she’d called it) had highlighted a few other ways in, ways that a trained acrobat and spy could use. Thanks to the Poppet System, Jenny Byrne could be all of those things. But those ways exited into the compound at specific locations. If she was using a backdoor access code, plus one of these poorly-covered entry points, she could make it in.
Alycia is confident Jenny won’t be here tonight - that would be too convenient. But she’s equally confident that she can plant sensors at these points. If someone sneaks in or out, she’ll be notified. All the team has to do is litter the house with the sensors, then get out.
Other team members have their own assignments. Alex will do their best to tap the Quill house’s computer with what they describe as a “fiendishly well designed gadget” that should help the team track Jenny’s movements if she trips the house’s sensors. Emma is in charge of making sure the team has a route out of the house. John is here as muscle, in case the team triggers a security response. Alycia isn’t sure if Jason and Leo have ever really gone head-to-head technologically, and she privately admits some curiosity how it would play out.
Nono is here to do the one thing Alycia can’t. The whole reason for this meeting is to help Harry Gale. Even though nanotechnology isn’t her specialty, Alycia still feels guilty for not at least trying to help a teammate and friend. Nono is an authentic but underappreciated chemistry genius with a knack for looking at problems from a fresh perspective. Maybe–
Maybe.
She hears a voice behind her say, “hello hero”.
God dammit.
She turns, to find Jason smiling at her. He’s got a drink in his hand, and he extends it. Alycia accepts, knowing it would break character to refuse.
“That’s what a friend of mine would say to me in greeting,” Jason says, smiling. “Those words. ‘Hello hero’. You know, I always wondered if she was being sarcastic. I was a hero on television, but I never felt like one in real life. I thought, maybe she could see through me, see the real me. Would it be better to be seen as who you really are? Or to be taken as the person you were pretending to be?”
Alycia realizes, with a rush of gratitude, that Jason is playing along despite seeing through her. But she must play along as well, so as not to alert the suspicion of anyone who overhears them in passing.
“I would hope your friend meant it sincerely, Mr. Quill. I think of you as a hero.”
Jason’s smile is lopsided, and tinged with emotions Alycia struggles to read. “That means a lot.”
He clasps his hands and smiles brightly, now the perfect host. “So! I think you are facing a very difficult problem here. What do you think of it?”
She knows it’s her exposure that he means, but manages a sage nod, the sort any academic here would offer to an essentially intellectual problem. “It is a perplexing business, Mr. Quill. I simply do not see a way forward at the present time.”
“As organizer, it’s my duty to facilitate your work in any way that I can. Please feel free to reach out to me.”
Alycia risks opening her hand for just a moment, in which rests one of the sensors, and mouths the letters “J B”. To the best of her knowledge, nobody is near enough to pick up on it - but she’s remembering that she must mistrust what she thinks she knows, and rely only on what she knows.
Jason, to his credit, picks up on the idea and immediately runs with it. “For example, maybe you are interested in locating a collaborator for a piece of research.”
Emotions are welling up in her heart, and she feels a growing headache and a tightening in her chest as they threaten to express themselves. She wants to confess her fears and doubts to him, tell him goodbye, tell him something that will let her run away into the darkness forever the way she must–
“I’ve put out some feelers, and perhaps can continue doing so here at your home,” she says smoothly.
Jason simply smiles and nods. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”
The ingrained training of her upbringing tells her to shoot him, silence him, keep him from leaking her existence here. This is an infiltration - she was blown - by all rights, she should–
She plants the next sensor, holding herself in check with a will of rapidly rusting iron.
Exfiltration was as easy as infiltration.
“Quill spotted me,” Alycia admits, when the team is back aboard the plane. “Motives currently unknown, but I will continue monitoring. If he becomes a liability…”
The others shuffle uncertainly in their positions.
“Report,” Alycia barks, a little more loudly than she wanted to. But what else can she do to prevent them from pitying her, or fearing her, right now?
Nono goes first. “Umm, Mr. Gale is suffering from some kinda nanotech infection. The most promising theory I heard from the group was that it was from the future.”
Alycia’s head snaps up at that, as a memory intrudes. Future tech in the Conversation Pit was something she experienced when first joining the Menagerie, all those years ago. But no - this wouldn’t be the same thing.
She takes a breath, and forces a smile. “Thank you. Resume reports.”
Alex is up next. “I couldn’t tap the Quill main computer, but I got my Poke’monitor plugged into an ancillary system and will continue forcing my attentions on the main system until it gives it all up.”
John follows. “Nothing to report, 'cause nobody started shooting at y’all. I want to hear about how the prosthetics worked out later, in case we do this again.”
“We will,” Alycia affirms. “That was useful technology.”
She turns to Emma.
The girl is ready, and shows off a handful of loose screws. “Found these near a vent. Big enough for a delicate Irish waif to get through.”
She looks around at the doubtful faces. “Hey, it ain’t just a thing on television. Ted Bundy did it.”
“Anyway, I put a sensor on there. Just in case she repeats routes. If she does. Fuckin thick as a brick if she does, in my opinion.”
Alycia nods. “Alright. Well. Good work, everyone. We’ll continue to plan for other contingencies. I’ll take a Chimera out to follow up on something. John, please make the arrangements to deploy.”
Once aboard her personal craft, Alycia departs the jet through the cargo hatch. The Chimera drops to a lower altitude, and she sets a random autopilot destination.
Once sure that radios and other communication devices are quite definitely offline, she rests her head against the back of the tiny craft and begins to cry.