How Spy I Am by Diane Henders

needles,
clearly visible even miles away. “Guess I’m over-compensating a
bit.”
    “Wow.” He leaned
against the rock, gazing across the wide vista, and I waited in
silence for my still-pounding heart to regain its normal
rhythm.
    A few minutes later,
Jack’s sultry voice purred out of the virtual sky. “Everything
seems fine. Do you want to try some decryptions?”
    “Sure.” Feeling
slightly more confident, I dissolved the mountain sim and made my
way to the file repository.
    Some tedious
decryptions calmed my pulse more effectively than the mountain sim,
and at last I looked up with a yawn. “Jack? What do you think?”
    “So far, so good,” she
replied cautiously. “Do you want to try the external network?”
    “Are you sure that’s a
good idea?” Spider chimed in worriedly. “Richardson can’t go in and
get you if anything happens outside our network. You could be in
trouble and we’d never know.”
    I tamped down the
quivers in my stomach. “I’d like to give it a try.”
    “But, Aydan…”
    “How about if I plan
to go in for five minutes? If I’m not back in five, just kick me
out of the network.”
    “But, Aydan,” Spider
tried again. “We don’t know what will happen if you’re off in some
other network and we shut down your session. What if your
consciousness can’t get back into your body?”
    That had always been
one of my worries, too, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Don’t
end it, then, just poke me with a pin or something to give me
enough pain that I get pulled out.”
    “That’s barbaric,”
Jack snapped.
    “But it’ll work. And
hey, then Smith will get to shoot me. That should make him
happy.”
    “Very funny,” Smith
sniffed from above the virtual ceiling.
    I reached toward
Richardson. “Let’s do it.”
    His hand closed around
mine, his eyes solemn. “Good luck,” he said.
    I took a deep breath
and vanished into the data stream.
    I quivered in the busy
flow of data for a few moments but nothing untoward happened, so I
tentatively began to sniff packets for information. Out in the
public data tunnels, I let off-colour email jokes and boring
interoffice memos soothe me, and my five minutes quickly
evaporated.
    When I snapped back
into the Sirius network, Richardson’s dimpled smile of relief
warmed my heart.
    I groaned my way out
of the network and gradually straightened, managing not to swear
too loudly. My stomach let out a growl as I rose, and Richardson’s
humorously raised eyebrow made me smile back at him.
    “I’m heading over to
the Greenhorn Cafe,” I told him. “I’ll get lunch there and stay
until three to do their books, so you might as well take a
break.”
    “Actually, take the
rest of the afternoon off,” Jack said. “I want more time to analyze
this data, and I don’t want Aydan using the network again until I’m
convinced it’s safe. I’m going to work on this for a while and then
take a late lunch, so we won’t need you before tomorrow
morning.”
    “Sounds good,” he
agreed, and rose to follow me out.
    Spider sprang up.
“Aydan, hang on a sec. Would you have time to take on a little web
design project for me?” He widened his eyes theatrically, and I
controlled my urge to cast a shifty gaze around the office. His
overacting went mercifully unnoticed by the others as they
straggled toward the door, and I strolled over to pull up a chair
beside him at the desk.
    “Sure. Do you want to
look at it right now?”
    “That would be
perfect. Here, I’ll let you scroll through it first.” I hoped
Spider’s stilted tones wouldn’t alert the analysts on the other end
of the bug as I carefully extracted it from my change purse and
laid it in front of him.
    In moments, he had
electronic equipment spread across the desk while he fiddled and
probed, frowning. A short time later, he straightened with a
sigh.
    “It’s okay, it’s not a
bug.”
    The air whooshed out
of me. “What is it, then?”
    “It’s a locator. It
showed up