The True Master Ch. 08

I nodded.

"How about digital locks?" I asked, pointing at the server rack which had a digital number pad locking mechanism to protect it.

Jeremy grimaced. "Yeah I can do old style stuff pretty easily. But I'm shit with technology," he said.

I smiled. "Well then, this is the other test. I want to see how well you follow directions," I said.

Picking up a small pouch from my desk, I handed it to him. Jeremy turned it upside down and looked at the contents. A small USB drive with an antenna, a cell phone with wireless headset, and a small circuit board with half a dozen alligator clips hanging off it.

"What's all of this?" he asked.

"I can hack the digital stuff from here. All you would need to do is hook up the clips and then I can crack the codes, whatever it is," I said.

"What, CSI style?" he asked.

I almost went on a diatribe about the inaccuracies, but I could see the smirk on his face so I ignored his goading.

"Crack the lock and hook up the clips to any exposed wires you find. Barring that, most of the more complicated locks have an interface for code updates, either through USB or wireless systems. If it's USB, plug that in. If its wireless, the phone and hacking chip there will find it and I can get in that way. You're shit with tech and I'm shit with analogue," I said.

Jeremy shrugged, and going over to the lock on the front of the server, didn't even bother with his tools. Instead, finding the lip in the plastic, he tore it off. Quickly finding the few wires leading from it, he put the alligator clips on.

Turning back to my computer and seeing that I was already getting the signal from the device, I set the macro to run. It started with all manufacturing defaults and hardware overwrites to directly open a lock, if someone was dumb enough to hook the pin input board directly to it. If the default codes failed, the macro would then attempt to use brute-force to find the code.

The server door popped open a moment later. Jeremy unhooked the board and turned back to me.

"That it?" he asked.

I nodded. "It is."

"I get my money then?" he asked.

"Yep it's in the safe you cracked earlier, so I'm betting you already have it, right?" I asked as I walked over to look inside the thing. I had purposefully only left the other 5K I had promised him. The safe was untouched, the folders and computer drives still in place, but the money was gone.

I turned back to him and Jeremy shrugged.

"Figured I would try," he said, sheepishly reaching into his pocket and holding out the money.

"So what am I doing to earn more of this?" he asked.

I glared at him for a moment before I sighed and sat down at my computer.

"I need you to break into a place and plug that USB into their servers, wait a minute and then leave," I said.

"That's it?" asked Jeremy.

"That's it," I said.

"If you're some big hacker guy then why can't you do that from here?" he asked, gesturing at the dozen monitors I had running, all of them showing different information feeds.

"Because it would take months to do what you can do in a night if you break in. I can't wait that long. There is also the possibility that they have someone competent working security and they find evidence leading back to me. What thief breaks into an office building at night and doesn't steal anything?"

I brought up the public satellite images of the building. It was a blocky cookie cutter office center in the suburbs of Seattle.

"This is the place," I said.

Jeremy leaned in to look at the building.

"And which office suite?" he asked.

"Suite 203. It's just servers inside there with almost no staff," I said.

"And how much am I getting to do this?" asked Jeremy.

"Ten thousand total. 3,000 upfront and 7,000 when you finish it," I said.

Jeremy stepped back and looked down at me. "And how do I know you aren't cheating me out of something here?" he asked.

I swiveled around to look at him. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, you're stealing stuff from them digitally. Credit card info can sell for a lot," he said. "Certainly more than 10,000."

I shrugged. "I'm not stealing that kind of information. This is just a stepping stone so I can get access to the company that owns the company that is a subsidiary to another company that contracted out this building to host load balancing servers and redundant data storage."

Jeremy glared at me for another moment and then nodded. "If the place is easy to get into, fine," he said.

"Fair enough."

Jeremy pulled up another chair and sat down to look over at Kate and Tracy who had been silently watching our conversation.

"So seriously, you paying them to be with you? If you can throw around this kind of money and you have a house like this," he said waving his hands around.

"No, I am not paying them," I said.

"What then, you did something to them? They call you Master. That's not normal and these women are sexy as hell," he said, leering at Kate.

"Master, may I punch the thief again?" asked Tracy as she took a step forward towards Jeremy. To his credit he didn't flinch but I could see him tensing up.

"No, not unless he says anything else inappropriate," I said.

Tracy glared at him and came over to sit on top of the desk next to me.

"So are you going to tell me what those things on their necks are then? Those aren't normal either," said Jeremy.

"If you don't want to end up dead or worse I would forget about those," I said.

Jeremy spun around in his chair grinning.

"Well now I'm only more interested," he said.

I groaned. "Look Jeremy, how old are you?" I asked.

Jeremy paused, throwing his feet to the ground to stop the chair from spinning. "Old enough to know when something fishy is going on, and to keep my mouth shut if I get paid. After this test job though we need to renegotiate my price if you want me to do more shit like this," he said.

"You seem awfully confident I'll want to hire you again. You can open locks and get knocked on your ass by supermodels. Not exactly a glowing resume," I said.

"Fine. When do you want me to do this?" asked Jeremy.

"Within the week. You call me when you're doing it though so I can work the digital side otherwise it's worthless. Afterwards, toss that phone. I'll get a new one if I do hire you again," I said.

Jeremy nodded and stood up. "Anything else?"

"No. Leave," I said.

Jeremy turned and after shooting a not very subtle wink at Kate he shot up the stairs and I heard the door close.

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. This was getting stressful.

"I know it was said before but can we trust him?" asked Tracy.

"I have no idea. But I need to start doing something and for now this will have to do. I'm making such slow headway breaking into the Company servers that it will take years to find Beth. If I get a backdoor into some of their smaller systems to start with, the process will go a lot faster." I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. It was only noon and I had gotten one of the best nights' sleep in my life, and a fantastic wake up call, but I was still wiped out.

"Master?" asked Kate, her voice now in front of me like Tracy.

"Yes?" I asked, my eyes still closed.

"We don't need to wear anything now, do we?" asked Kate.

I opened my eyes to see she was already holding the hem of the sweatshirt she was in, which although hot in and of itself, the way she was biting her lip was much more so.

"No," I said, my voice trailing off as she slowly began to pull the sweatshirt off, revealing her pale skin. It was crazy; I had examined every inch of her skin and yet, this was still as hot as the first time.

"Good; It's hot down here," she said and quickly ripped off the sweats to reveal the lacy black lingerie she was wearing.

I frowned and forced my eyes to her face. She was smiling innocently.

"You are a tease," I said.

Kate grinned. "Well, if you want to see some skin Master, all you have to do is say so."

I stood up, and going around Kate, went to stand in front of Tracy.

"Are you wearing lingerie underneath all of that?" I asked.

"No Master," said Tracy.

"Then strip and let me check," I said.

I heard a pout from Kate but ignored her as Tracy slipped off the desk to press herself to me. She began to slowly strip, ever the tease. Leaning into me, she shimmied out of her sweatpants which dropped to the floor, pooling around her feet. Keeping her eyes locked on mine, she slowly pulled her top off, keeping her breasts pressed to me as she revealed that she was indeed not wearing anything else.

I put my mouth to her neck and quickly gave her a small hickey. Tracy gasped and her hands went to my shoulders to hold herself up.

"Well I must say that is some fine skin and I can see all of it."

"That's just mean, Master," said Kate from behind me.

Pulling slightly away from Tracy I turned the two of us to look at her.

"Well I can't let you have all the fun," I said.

"You could have just ordered me to strip," huffed Kate.

"Yeah, but that would have been too easy," I said.

Kate rolled her eyes. "Well you could really order all of us around more you know," she said.

"Are you starting to feel like I'm not your Master again?" I asked.

Kate shook her head. "No, you are certainly my Master, but I don't know, you hardly ever give orders," she said.

"I don't need to, the three of you are more than eager and take initiative on almost everything. Like this morning, I'm not going to complain about that. I don't have to order you to do anything because you're already doing it most of the time," I said.

"Really?"

"Really," I said, and nudged Tracy to the side. Kate stood up and joined our embrace.

I squeezed the two and closed my eyes for a moment, relaxing.

"By the way, what's Helen up to?" I asked.

"She said she wanted to try something. I think she might need help though to be honest," said Kate.

"Do I want to know why?" I asked.

"Well she's pretty flexible but she's not a contortionist," said Kate.

I blinked. "I'm not sure what that means," I said.

"Well if it works I think you'll like it. But one of us should go help her."

"Alright then, who wants to help with lunch?" I asked.

---

After lunch and at the insistence that I leave the three of them alone so they could work on whatever Helen was doing, I went back down to the lab and sat down at my computer. Jeremy was gone and he hadn't contacted me again; I didn't expect him to for a few days, if ever. The servers were all tied up, still sorting out the brain scans trying to build associative models.

There was almost nothing for me to do.

Looking for anything to do I glanced over at the original tablet that had come with Kate. I had already copied every bit of data off it and I had my own interfaces to connect to the chips. I should honestly destroy it. If it was ever connected to a computer network again, even by accident, he Company would know my location in an instant.

Pulling it over I looked at it.

It was a common black computer tablet, nothing out of the ordinary, and yet all of its manufacturing data was missing. I hadn't really considered this before, thinking it was like any other tablet and didn't have the same unsubstantial feel of a knockoff.

Curiosity finally got the best of me, I reached for my toolset and turned the tablet over beginning to disassemble it. Two screws and several bent pieces of plastic later it was open. The screen, battery, and main circuit board were now all in separate piles on my desk.

For a moment I was disappointed that it was exactly what I had expected, and nothing particularly revolutionary. Frustrated, I slammed my fist down onto it with more force than I had expected and shattered the screen. I left my hand there for a moment before registering the pain; the glass had broken and was poking at my skin.

With a sigh I stood up and looked at my hand. It was a small cut but deep from what I could tell, with no glass inside the wound. I quickly grabbed the towel that was hanging from one of the examination chairs and put it to my hand to staunch the bleeding.

I didn't know what to do. I was doing everything that I could at that moment but it was still a pitiful amount of effort compared to what I would have to do to take down the Company. I would need an army of people to help.

I paused. An army. That might actually be possible.

Sitting back down at my computer I stared at the screen. Back in 2011 when the protests had kicked off, the hacker community had galvanized and rallied to play politics .Since then things had kind of slacked off but still, it had proven that given a cause they could do something.

I couldn't let data leak about the Dolls though. Mind control was not a technology that could ever become common knowledge or practice; the potential for abuse was far too high. Most political hackers were also little better than script kiddies save for a talented few. They could do indiscriminate damage without much creativity.

Leaning back in my chair I considered it. I would need a strong motivator, it didn't matter if it was true or not, to get public opinion on my side. Then I would play by ear anything that came up, leaking information gradually onto the internet to encourage an attack on the Company. The attack would tie up resources, and, once I had enough access, allow me to use it as a distraction to perform a final infiltration of the Company networks.

Still, this was months away at best, if Jeremy could help me access some of the lower priority servers. I needed something to pin on the Company though. Something that would enrage the world at large, and I could leak at any time to be the distraction. Pulling my keyboard towards me I began to research the Company, venturing into page after page of verified data and post after post of unverified data.

After several hours I had confirmed that the Company's public face was like any other large conglomerate. Filled with corruption and more than a few "early retirements" to non-extradition countries. Nothing on their Dolls though; the main face of the Company was biomedical research and production.

Shaking my head, I stood up and stretched, my joints popping and creaking. I would have to find something they were hiding that wasn't related to the Dolls and create a controversy. I had no idea what it could be, or if I could even do it, but still it was an idea and something to work on.

Closing the research, I brought up the results of the brain scans as they were at the moment with the server correlating the data. Kate's pattern was the most simplistic it seemed, the computer had no issues mapping her thoughts and reactions to stimuli and it was almost done analyzing her. It made sense, considering that she had the least clutter in her head, unable to remember anything before being a Doll. Disturbingly, it also meant that her brain wasn't even accessing her memories or experiences on a subconscious level and the human brain was constantly rewiring itself, so the longer she was without her memories the less likely it was that they would come back.

"Master!" a panicked shout came from above me. For a moment I was frozen, then bolting from my seat I jumped up the stairs two at a time, going up the second flight in even less time.

I threw open the door to the bedroom, Tracy and Helen were leaning down next to Kate who was on the floor in the bathroom clutching at her arm.

"What happened?" I asked.

Kate took a breath and forcing a smile, looked up at me. "I slipped Master. I think I broke something." ,said Kate and she slowly held her hand out to me. A deep bruise was already developing underneath the golden paint on her skin. I glanced up to see that both Tracy and Helen had varying amounts of what looked like latex body paint on them, Helen's project it seemed. If not for Kate's injury the sight would have been comical.

"I don't know anything about a broken wrist but I have to agree," I said, looking at her hand.

Kate whimpered and nodded. "I'm sorry Master," she said.

"Why? You're the one who's hurt," I said. Leaning down, I carefully picked Kate up bridal style, carrying her back out into the bedroom.

Carefully setting her down on the bed, I turned back to the other two.

"Someone get a bag of ice and some clothes for her," I said. "We need to take you to a clinic or something to get this checked," I said.

"Can we do that Master?" asked Kate.

She was right, clinics necessitated paperwork and identification at the least. Kate didn't have any of that, and in any case, filling that paperwork would leave a trail, something that the Company could track. Unless, that is, we went to a clinic that was local to the area and wasn't a branch that would file or transmit paperwork. I was probably being a little too paranoid but I didn't want to take chances.

"We have to, if your wrist isn't set then it could do more damage," I said.

"Master," said Helen as she stepped around me and handed Kate the bag of ice. Moving slowly, Kate put the bag down on her other wrist and hissed in pain.

"Everyone get dressed, I need to find a clinic," I said.

"Everyone, Master?" asked Tracy.

"Everyone, .We're all going. What would it look like if a guy shows up to a clinic trying to bribe for treatment and not wanting to file paperwork for a woman with a broken wrist." I said.

Tracy's eyes widened and she nodded. "Right, so we're moral support thane?" she asked.

I shrugged. "You two can just say she tripped, which would be the truth." I said.

Tracy nodded and then looked down at herself, half of her body still covered in paint. "I suppose a quick shower is needed as well." I said.

She nodded and I turned back to Helen. "Nice surprise, we'll have to do this some other day though," I said.

Helen nodded. "Of course Master."

I turned back to Kate who Tracy was helping to slowly get dressed.

"Are you good for now? I need to grab some money and find a place to go," I said.

Kate nodded.

With another quick glance back at her I nodded, and, moving just as quickly as before, I bolted down to the basement to do some quick research.

---

*The True Slave.*

I was in the back of the car with Tracy and everything was quiet except for the Master's phone, squawking directions to the clinic, while we drove through the countryside.

I winced as we went over another bump in the poorly maintained roads and my hand moved slightly. It was stupid; the floor had been wet and I had lost my balance. I had thrown my arms out to catch myself and landed one of them the wrong way, twisting it around. At first I had thought it was nothing, but as soon as I had tried to move it the pain had lanced up my arm.

I had made the Master angry, how could I not have?

"Kate?" he said, leaning back in his seat to glance back at me.

"Yes Master?"

"Can I try something?" Heh asked, his eyes still focused on the road in front of him.

"Uh, yes." I couldn't refuse anything from him and didn't want to, even if it was my punishment for getting myself hurt.

"I order you to not feel the pain in your wrist," he said.

I gasped as the pain melted away to be replaced with a pleasant throb. I tentative l raised my hand up to look at it the. T bruise, which had already been fairly large when we had gotten in the car, was now around my entire wrist, the entire joint swollen.

"Don't move it. I doubt an order will be enough to heal it. Did that work though?" he asked.

"Yes," I said as my arm froze into place, following his orders.

"Interesting, .So not only can the chips initiate responses they can suppress them as well," said the Master.