Shadows of Sherwood (35 page)

“Ha,” she said, moments later. “Yes. It is one big back door.”

“What does that mean?” Robyn asked.

“It means—” She turned the computer screen toward Robyn, who found herself looking at patron records for the library. With a click of the keyboard, they could see who had checked out books.

“This is just an example,” Scarlet said, waving her hand. “The library system is mostly public anyway. If we can get it onto a terminal where there's real information, we can get in without anyone seeing us.”

“Like in the compound last night?”

“Yeah, except last night I was hacking directly through their system. Like trying to break in through the front door. Sooner or later they always catch on to what I'm doing.”

“And this modem makes it different?”

Scarlet nodded. “The government monitors these systems like crazy. Everything's wireless, but it's almost impossible to hack into.” She raised the modem. “With this device, I can access their systems in a way that they don't monitor, through the wired connections. No one monitors those anymore, because no one uses them.”

Robyn nodded. “Like sneaking in the back door.” A high-tech version of the way she had gotten into Sherwood Jail—by skipping the high-tech keypad and going for the old-school hinges.

“Yeah,” Scarlet said. “If you hook this up to the Nott City ID databases, you can track people's Tags, the way the government does,” Scarlet said. “For one example.”

“So,” Robyn mused, “You can tell where people are? You can find them?” Her heart skipped with excitement. Could Scarlet really help her track her parents?

Scarlet nodded. “Yeah, but not just that. You can also make them think you—or someone else—isn't where they really are. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah. What about the prisoner database?” Robyn asked. “Can you get into that?”

“Not from here,” Scarlet said. “The NCID databases are one closed system. You can't hack in from here without them knowing. We'd have to get to a physical terminal that
runs the system, and then we can come in with this baby.” She tapped the modem lovingly. “They might never know the difference.”

“How about something in the BioNet database?” Robyn asked. Her wheels turned around the situation. “I need to get into Sherwood Clinic.”

Scarlet looked troubled. “That is a complicated system, too, but yeah. If you got physically into the clinic, and hooked to their servers. That's what I'm talking about.”

“Getting in is easy. It's getting out that's the issue,” Robyn said, as Laurel had observed earlier.

“Getting out with what?”

“Medicine. For the stingbug epidemic,” Robyn answered.

“Oh,” Scarlet nodded knowingly. “Yeah. Give me a couple of days and I can figure out—“

Robyn shook her head. “I need it now.”

“Like, right now?” Scarlet said.

“Yes,” Robyn said. “Laurel, my friend from last night? She's got it bad. I have to help her.”

Scarlet sighed. “If we get caught in there—”

“I know,” Robyn said. “But I have to try. Do you want to come, or do you want to just show me?”

Scarlet looked offended. “Show you?” she said. “Like transfer years of experience and knowledge to you in one magical psychic mind meld?” She stared into Robyn's eyes. “Not possible.”

Robyn stared back, willing herself not to smile. “Okay, then. So you're coming?”

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Through the Back Door

It had seemed like a great idea when they were hunkered down in the relative safety of the library. Now, standing on the street in front of the Sherwood Clinic, Robyn wasn't so sure. It wasn't as life threatening as breaking into the 410 Compound. The security here was all digital—no guards apart from an older, uniformed man on a stool inside the door who appeared not at all ready to take down any threats. He barely blinked as people strolled in and out through the cage of the sliding doors.

Would the gloves she wore prevent the BioNet from reading her presence? Just walking though the waiting room could trip the sensors. They were set to scan the incoming patients for acute conditions. Electronic triage, her mother always called it, so that the sickest people would be sure to get served first.

Robyn's heart was racing. Was that a medical condition? She wondered if she would get flagged for nervousness. She tried to control her breathing.

For Laurel. For the others suffering in T.C. She had to take the risk. Robyn took a deep breath and stepped between the doors. When the glass slid shut behind her, she had to remind herself to breathe. Not breathing was definitely a serious medical condition.

The glass in front of her opened. “Welcome to Sherwood Clinic,” the greeter said, in a flat tone of voice. “Waiting to your left. Billing to your right.”

Robyn nodded to him as Scarlet followed her in through the doors. They scooted down the hall toward the Billing Department. The medicine stock would be kept back by those offices, too, Robyn assumed.

She strode confidently down the hallway, though neither she nor Scarlet was familiar with the building. They had done enough reconnaissance to note the presence of all the exterior doors on the building—and the fact that all were equipped with InstaScan double doors, including the staff-only exits. There could be no easy stealing of medicine from this clinic.

Doctors and nurses, clinic volunteers, patients, and lab techs roamed the halls. Robyn and Scarlet blended in well enough. They wandered until they reached a room labeled Pharmacy. It was an active pharmacy—with staff at high tables counting pills into vials and patients waiting in curvy plastic chairs.

“Maybe there's a storeroom,” Robyn suggested. Otherwise, they'd have to come up with some kind of diversion. Pulling a fire alarm was not out of the question, but it would
be messy. Not the way Robyn liked to roll. Stealth was the key, in her mind. Not like the great truck-through-the-gate debacle that landed her as one of Sherwood's Most Wanted.

The girls continued down the hall and soon discovered a second entrance to the pharmacy. The door had a digital keypad lock. Through the window, they could see lines of plastic bins with pill boxes, medicine vials, jars of ground herbs, tubes of cream, and bottles of antiseptic solution.

Scarlet went to work on the keypad. Robyn leaned a shoulder against the wall, covering Scarlet's hacking effort from the eyes of passersby. In a matter of seconds the lock clicked free. Robyn found herself grateful that she hadn't come to the clinic alone, which was strange—she'd never minded going solo in the past. There were plenty of heists she could certainly pull off on her own, but it was amazing to see how much more she could do with help.

They slipped into the pharmacy and combed the shelves for the medicine they needed. The sounds of the transactions at the front of the room made the risk of capture seem closer than it had in the hallway. The pop of pill caps and the register's
ching
and the soft voices discussing pill side effects and timing routines. How often did the pharmacy techs come back to get a new medicine? Were the squeaking sounds of comfortable shoes on tile heading their way?

“Here,” Scarlet said, pointing to a large bin on the second-to-bottom shelf. There was plenty of stingbug medicine. Dozens of bottles, each with a barcode.

“Can we just take them out of the bottle?” Robyn said. There were plenty of plastic bins around that appeared to be uncoded.

“The pills themselves must be coded, too,” Scarlet said. She opened a bottle and they stared down at the small orange pills. “Otherwise it would be too easy.”

“How do we get them out?” Robyn asked.

“I see two options,” Scarlet said “Recode the bottles into something that we can leave with, or else try to jam the doors open.”

“Doors,” Robyn said. “Isn't that easier?”

“Easier. Faster. And riskier,” Scarlet said with a shrug. “If it doesn't work, you're screwed.”

“
I'm
screwed?” Robyn said. She'd thought they were in this together.

“Yeah,” Scarlet said. “To keep the doors open, I'll have to stay at the terminal with the modem plugged in. While you get out with the pills.”

To succeed in this journey, you will be required to trust.

Robyn sighed. She had come this far, and the fact was, she couldn't do it alone. “Let's do it,” she said.

Robyn and Scarlet returned to the hallway. Robyn's backpack bulged with pill vials. They had stuffed it to the max, but it wasn't too heavy. They found the room with the building's computer servers and luckily it was empty. They ducked inside. The machines hummed away, and Robyn could see
servers for the BioNet database, the InstaScan system, the medicine coding, and more. The other side of the room contained shelves of digital medical equipment, all hooked into dozens of charging stations.

Scarlet crouched under the main desk, looking at the setup. Robyn knelt beside her, keeping her head low, lest anyone glance in the window and see them.

The central computer was attached to a single power cord that disappeared into the wall and probably led to solar panels on the roof. Otherwise, it was completely wireless. But as Scarlet predicted, the terminal still had a wired connection socket that wasn't being used.

She plugged Barclay's modem into the server and attached a handheld tablet of her own to the modem. “This is the oldest thing I could find,” she commented. “New PalmTabs don't even have any ports.”

As Scarlet clicked away at the miniature screen, Robyn's focus drifted. She opened her backpack and studied the tiny raised tracking chip on the pill bottle. Should they recode them instead, after all? The coding server appeared to be right there . . .

Footsteps in the hallway snapped her back to attention. Voices sounded from immediately outside the room. They grew louder as the server room door swung open.

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE