Night 69: Secret Stairs

[ninelivesonce]

[from here]

The stairs, unlike the ones in the rest of the building, were metal, narrow, and stretched straight up. Taura pointed her flashlight up them, but there wasn't anything on them. Yet. That they could see. Taura took them two at a time. Which was slow by her standards.

Or at least she took the first two of them that way; as soon as her foot hit the treads on the second step, the ground shuddered into motion. "It's automatic," she hissed, as if Rita couldn't see that for herself. It wasn't moving that fast; she could run down it if she'd wanted to, but it made her feel like the walls were closing in. The flickering lights didn't help; they certainly didn't make her feel more confident that anything mechanical here was working properly, and even if it was, it wasn't likely going to be for her benefit.

Comments

[overlimit]

They would be locked out after “too many” wrong entries, which meant they had at least one free try. Asking Landel for help was out of the question, so it looked like all they could do was give it a shot. Even if they had no chance of guessing it, maybe they could figure something out.

“All right, let’s see what we can do.” Rita stepped forward, raising her own hand to IRIS’s. She hesitated then, both due to the uncertainty of her next move, and the awkwardness of using someone’s hand for a user interface.

Red, blue, and yellow… Rita expected a code to be something that contained words or numbers. Colors seemed a bit childish, though maybe there was a trick to it. For now, she started by pressing the red button. How many buttons made for a complete entry? She supposed she'd just have to play it by ear, one by one.

[ninelivesonce]

As long as they didn't tell I.R.I.S. they were unauthorized, they had a few chances. Or at least one, which Rita was working on.

"If an authorized user needed a reminder, could you give them one? All, um, strictly hypothetically speaking, that is." Miles would know what to ask. Taura was flying rather more blindly. Though she suspected he did that more than he liked to admit, and he admitted it a lot. Seeding it with truth was key, though -- she didn't like lying, but she didn't have to. "I've worked with House and military security before; it's interesting to compare strategies."

She let Rita get on with pressing buttons while she talked; she could catch the sequence Rita had picked out of the corner of her eye without making it obvious that she was watching.