{"id":266,"date":"2024-01-23T22:00:33","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T03:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/?p=266"},"modified":"2025-01-28T23:56:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T04:56:24","slug":"identity-theft-chapter-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/identity-theft-chapter-17\/","title":{"rendered":"The Changeling Game, Chapter 17"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">\ntt {\nfont: .857em menlo, monaco, consolas, monospace;\nmargin: auto;\n}\nh2 {\ntext-align: center;\n}\nh2.chapterhead {\nmargin-bottom: 2em;\ntext-align: center;\n}\n  .nowrap {\n    text-indent: 0;\n    display: inline-block;\n}\n<\/style>\n<p><b>Title:<\/b> The Changeling Game <small>(Formerly <i>Identity Theft<\/i>)<\/small><br \/>\n<b>Author:<\/b> Ardath Rekha<br \/>\n<b>Chapter:<\/b> 17\/?<br \/>\n<b>Fandom:<\/b> TCOR AU<br \/>\n<b>Rating:<\/b> T<br \/>\n<b>Warnings:<\/b> Adult themes, controversial subject matter, harsh language<br \/>\n<b>Category:<\/b> Gen<br \/>\n<b>Pairing:<\/b> None<br \/>\n<b>Summary:<\/b> The lies have been told. Jack\u2019s staff account has been bought, with Riddick\u2019s reputation. Now Jack scrambles to tie off the loose threads she left hanging, and makes a disturbing discovery that forces her to accelerate the time-table for her escape with Kyra.<br \/>\n<b>Disclaimer:<\/b> The characters and events of <i>Pitch Black,<\/i> <i>The Chronicles of Riddick,<\/i> and <i>The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury<\/i> are not mine, but belong to Universal Studios.  I just <i>wish<\/i> I were in charge of their fates.  No money is being made off of this.  I\u2019m writing strictly for love of the story.<br \/>\n<b>Feedback:<\/b> Absolutely, the more the better!  Shred me, whip me, beat me, make me feel grammatical! I post \u201crough,\u201d so I can always use the help. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<input type='hidden' bg_collapse_expand='6aabffc6b10300052620696' value='6aabffc6b10300052620696'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-more-text-6aabffc6b10300052620696' value='Long post is long. Click to read the story.'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-less-text-6aabffc6b10300052620696' value='Hide the story again.'><button id='bg-showmore-action-6aabffc6b10300052620696' class='bg-showmore-plg-button bg-green-button  '   style=\" color:#D9ECFB;\">Long post is long. Click to read the story.<\/button><div id='bg-showmore-hidden-6aabffc6b10300052620696' ><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"chapterhead\">17.<br \/>\n<u>The Player and the Game<\/u><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack ran out of Stacey\u2019s room at top speed, heading for the bathroom, the precious slip of paper with her staff account information clutched tightly in one hand.  She ran flat-out, as though pursued by the natives of a world with too many suns and too much darkness.  She still almost didn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It was only when she was already heaving that the full weight of the d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu settled on her.  Weeks ago, after her first group therapy session, she\u2019d flung herself into this very same stall.  Then she\u2019d been struggling to make people believe the truth about Riddick.  Now\u2026 lies.  She\u2019d been telling horrible, nauseating lies that had driven what was left of her breakfast right back out of her. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>If he knew what I\u2019d said, he\u2019d hate me so much\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It was over, she realized, as she forced herself to her shaky feet.  Whatever chance she\u2019d had of one day meeting Riddick again, renewing their friendship, indulging her fantasies\u2026 was over.  She\u2019d never be able to look him in the eye, not after betraying him like this.  Even if he never knew, <i>she<\/i> would.  She\u2019d destroyed it, all of it.  There was nothing left; nothing more.  Richard B. Riddick was out of her reach forever, and she\u2019d never have the right to look for him. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack had betrayed him.  Jack had to die.  Audrey would leave here and resume her life, but Jack had no right to live on anymore, within or without. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">But first, she had to get out of this place. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Stacey\u2019s door was still closed when she left the bathroom. She tried not to think about what Stacey was doing behind that door, let alone what the vicious girl was imagining as she did it. Instead, she walked resolutely back to the library and the vacant terminals. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It had felt like she had been talking forever, but the clocks said it hadn\u2019t been all that long. Lunch was still two hours away. She could hear the sounds of a popular movie playing in the main recreation area. She recognized the opening credits theme and knew it was one almost everybody had been waiting to see. Abu and Lajjun, still trying to pull her out of her downward spiral, had taken her to it during its first week in theaters, a scant month before she cut her wrists. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The library would probably be deserted. Maybe she could get her ass covered even before lunch. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Carmouche had gone off-duty and been replaced by an orderly that Jack didn\u2019t recognize. That wasn\u2019t ideal. The woman was tall, slender but muscled, her medium-brown hair tied back. She was reading one of the old, thick, Victoria Holt novels from old Earth and <i>seemed<\/i> absorbed in the text, but her posture reminded Jack somehow of Riddick at rest: contained peril that could burst forth at any moment. Jack wondered if the orderly normally worked on D Ward. Most of her nametag was blocked by the book she held, but it ended with \u201c-AN.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Pretending to ignore the orderly, Jack walked over to the terminals as calmly and resolutely as she could\u2014<i>act like you belong and people will believe you belong<\/i>\u2014waiting to be challenged, but she wasn\u2019t. Either the orderly bought the act or just didn\u2019t care either way.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Then again, everybody on the staff seemed to think they had all of their patients sandboxed on the computers. The truth was anything but. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Whatever else could be said about her, Stacey <i>had<\/i> come through. The login worked. Even better, as the staff menu opened up, Jack recognized its layout immediately. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Her father had helped design it. He\u2019d shown her how it worked. And best of all, she still remembered the law enforcement override that he had helped build into it. Any law enforcement agency that had the command on file could get in. <i>She<\/i> could get in. On a level that the other girls had no idea existed. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>I might not even have to wait to make my move until I leave C ward,<\/i> she thought with shaky amazement. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Before she did anything else, though, she needed to make sure that she had control of the Celia situation. Stacey would be preoccupied for a little while longer\u2026 she hoped\u2026 and that would give her enough time to make sure that neither she\u2014nor any of the other Killer\u2019s Club girls with purloined admin accounts\u2014could ever find out that it was Jack\u2019s intel that had led to the girl\u2019s transfer. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Snitches get stitches,<\/i> she reminded herself. <i>Those would be hard for Audrey to explain.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She pulled up the transfer notice and read it carefully. No signs of her handiwork there. Next, however, was Celia\u2019s file. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">There it was. <\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom: 1em\"><tt>Based on confidential information from a fellow patient, we now know that Celia has been targeted for group bullying by a clique in the C ward nicknamed the \u201cKiller\u2019s Club.\u201d Given her relatively clean record and overall progress, we are moving her to B ward to ensure her safety.<\/tt><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That wouldn\u2019t do at all. Only members of the Killer\u2019s Club had been in the room when Stacey revealed her plan, and only Jack was an unknown quantity to them. If any of them read it, it would be instantly obvious that the patient in question was her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Let\u2019s just fix that, shall we?<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack rewrote the paragraph, changing the wording carefully so that it would still sound like something an adult, a professional, had written. Finally she was satisfied. <\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom: 1em\"><tt>Based on similar prior incidents, we believe that Celia has been targeted for group bullying, possibly by a clique in the C ward nicknamed the \u201cKiller\u2019s Club.\u201d Given her relatively clean record and overall progress, we are moving her to B ward to ensure her safety.<\/tt><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That, she finally thought with a sigh, was as good as she could make it. Now she just needed to make sure there were no handles in her own record\u2026 and do a little sanitizing of any information that could be used to track her once she bugged out. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Her<\/i> record still listed her as Jane Doe 7439. That was a good sign. If they were trying to pin her identity down, nothing had come back yet. She moved to the most recent entries in her chart first. Would they have mentioned the incident? <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Damn. Of course they did. And they have no idea how porous their system is\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Not that the code was porous, of course. Her father didn\u2019t <i>do<\/i> bad work. It wasn\u2019t his fault that one of the orderlies had been so lax about security, or that none of the features to detect and prevent that kind of breach that had been enabled. And she might just clean up a few more things once she launched the law enforcement back door.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">But first, there was an entry to fix\u2014and carefully\u2014before any of the Killer\u2019s Club girls thought to take a look.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom: 1em\"><tt>In spite of the fact that Miss Doe was the first to get into a fight with Celia Wyndham, she has obliquely expressed remorse for the act by warning us that Miss Wyndham is now the target of systematic bullying. The previous concerns about her closer association with the Killer\u2019s Club may be unfounded.<\/tt><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She definitely couldn\u2019t risk any of the girls seeing that. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It took her almost a half hour, and a dozen unsatisfactory attempts, to find wording that would work. Not far off, she could hear the movie getting more and more car-chase and explosion heavy. Although few girls ventured into the library at any time, she couldn\u2019t risk any of Stacey\u2019s friends looking over her shoulder while she worked on this. Satisfied at last, she saved the new paragraph.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 2em;margin-right: 2em;margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom: 1em\"><tt>Miss Doe\u2019s instigation of the systematic bullying of Celia Wyndham seems to confirm our previous concerns about her growing association with the Killer\u2019s Club. She should be monitored closely for any signs of remorse for her actions.<\/tt><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Much better,<\/i> she thought. Now she was the Killer\u2019s Club\u2019s newest accomplice, not their snitch. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She read through the rest of her record carefully, looking for any notes that could potentially connect her to Audrey MacNamera once she went on the run. Someone had identified her accent as common to Deckard\u2019s World. She deleted the line and found three more references to Deckard\u2019s World\u2014all speculative, but still\u2014that needed to be deleted as well. The movie ended as she saved and closed Jane Doe 7439\u2019s files. Nobody had come in yet; the orderly who had taken over from Carmouche appeared to be engrossed in her Victoria Holt novel and happy to ignore her. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Perfect. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Backing out to the administrative main menu, she launched the special login for law enforcement, holding her breath until its distinctive menu appeared. Now for the important moves. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She changed her staff account so that it was top-tier, with access to everything, and checked that the other Killer\u2019s Club accounts\u2014easy to identify now that she could see who had created each account\u2014had been on the same tier that her own had been. She was relieved to see that none of them would have had greater clearance than she had; she didn\u2019t need to dig back into her file, or Celia\u2019s, to make sure that she hadn\u2019t missed anything she hadn\u2019t had access to. When it suddenly occurred to her to check Stacey\u2019s file for references to her, she was relieved to see that there were none.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She only got to spend a few more minutes poking around on the law enforcement level, gleaning passcodes and information about lockdown systems, before she heard voices approaching. Her screen was back to normal\u2014the screen of an ordinary patient\u2014before Xi Hin and Omphal\u00e9 walked in.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She suppressed a sigh of relief.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cHey, Jack,\u201d Xi Hin said, her voice very nearly friendly. \u201cYou haven\u2019t seen a certain drama queen around, have you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack glanced nervously at the orderly, who was continuing to ignore them. The woman turned another page in her novel, seemingly oblivious to their conversation. <i>Or she\u2019s really good at pretending not to listen\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She decided to at least pretend to go with the latter. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Making her glance at the orderly a little more obvious, Jack motioned Xi Hin and Omphal\u00e9 to move further away from the front desk with her. Both girls looked intrigued as they followed her. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cShe\u2019s gone,\u201d she whispered, once she was sure that even an astute eavesdropper would be out of range. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cGone?\u201d Xi Hin blurted. Omphal\u00e9 shushed her. \u201cWhat do you mean, gone?\u201d she continued in a whisper. \u201cIt\u2019s my turn to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That earned her another shushing from Omphal\u00e9. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cStacey told me earlier,\u201d Jack whispered, glad that she didn\u2019t have to be the originator of the news. \u201cSent up to B Ward.\u201d <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cWhy?\u201d Omphal\u00e9 whispered, her expression shocked. Stacey had been enraged, but Omphal\u00e9 just seemed confused. The plans for tormenting the girl had probably just been a diversion to her, and not the serious business they\u2019d become for Stacey. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack shrugged. It was better not to leave too many handles out by knowing too much. \u201cThat\u2019s what she wanted to know, too.\u201d <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Xi Hin turned and sat down at the nearest terminal\u2014Jack\u2019s\u2014and logged her out before logging into <i>her<\/i> staff account. After a moment, she swore. \u201cThey figured us out, looks like. Sounds like Stacey\u2019s not the first one to play that game here.\u201d <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Omphal\u00e9 gave Jack an askance look and whispered something to Xi Hin, who started typing up a new query. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Bet I know what they\u2019re going to check\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Omphal\u00e9\u2019s amused snort confirmed it. \u201cThey say you instigated it all, Jack. Stacey\u2019s gonna be pissed that you\u2019re getting all the credit.\u201d <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack walked over and read the doctored passage over Xi Hin\u2019s other shoulder, taking her time before reacting. Let them think she was a slowish reader. Let them think she\u2019d never read that paragraph before, much less written most of it. \u201cLooks to me like that\u2019s <i>blame<\/i> I\u2019m getting, not credit.\u201d <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cPo-tay-toe, Po-tah-toe.\u201d <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Inwardly, part of her wanted to curl into a ball and shiver for hours. She had come dangerously close to earning the lifelong enmity of the cruelest and most brutal girls in the ward. If Stacey had decided to dig into the reasons for Celia\u2019s transfer <i>before<\/i> hearing Jack\u2019s story, or if the other Killer\u2019s Club girls hadn\u2019t been distracted by an action movie\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>I\u2019d be in pieces, or maybe just in D Ward\u2026 and I\u2019d never get out of here.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cYou okay?\u201d <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She glanced over at both girls. \u201cYeah, sorry. I, uh\u2026 told Stacey some stuff she wanted to know about\u2026 uh\u2026 Riddick\u2026 and\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She swallowed. Thinking about that recitation in Stacey\u2019s room made her feel ill and guilty all over again. No faking needed. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The girls\u2019 faces were almost sympathetic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cHey,\u201d Xi Hin said after a moment. \u201cI bet the therapists\u2019d say it\u2019s good you\u2019re facing that stuff head-on. You know, admitting the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She and Omphal\u00e9 nodded at each other with the sage expressions of old veterans at therapy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cI guess,\u201d she replied, and the lunch bell rang.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Food had no appeal to Jack. She sat quietly at the table, picking at the unappetizing contents of her plate, while conversation flowed around her. She avoided even glancing in Stacey\u2019s direction. It was hard to look Kyra\u2019s way, either. Those had been <i>her<\/i> ordeals she\u2019d been describing. She just hoped that Kyra was right about Stacey, and that the stories would never spread. Having Riddick\u2019s reputation tarnished with Red Roger\u2019s crimes on Canaan Mountain would be a disaster. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>I need more time in the system,<\/i> she thought to herself. The sooner she could get out of this place, the better, before even more of her soul was compromised. She needed codes. She needed to sanitize Kyra\u2019s records, too, so that her friend would also be harder to trace. There were a thousand moving parts and she needed to line all of them up\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Everyone was getting up. The meal was over.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cI\u2019d ask how it went, but I guess I know,\u201d murmured Kyra as they rose. \u201cYou okay?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack looked over at Kyra, wishing she had even half the armor and aplomb the older girl possessed. Knowing what she had endured just made her all the more impressive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>I have to get her out of here.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cI will be,\u201d she managed after a moment. \u201cI need to get more time on the library terminals. Can you cover for me? Keep people from wondering what I\u2019m up to?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Kyra nodded, although she seemed to be wondering why it was so important. When the other girls in the Killer\u2019s Club headed for the recreation room, she kept them distracted while Jack slipped away.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The romance novel enthusiast was still on duty in the library. Jack picked a different workspace, selecting a table with two terminals facing away from both the duty desk and the entry. On one, she began leading a set of false trails, using her patient account to browse pages that related to interests she\u2019d never had as Audrey MacNamera. On the other, she logged in to her improved, highest level staff account and made some further changes to her patient record, deleting entries about her prior browsing history and the subjects she\u2019d pursued. In their place, she added records connected to the new sites she was browsing. Jane Doe 7439, she had decided, liked to read about neo-Cajun cuisine, watched New Creole cooking shows, liked to listen to zydeco music, and never made anything above a B- on her schooling modules.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">While another cooking show started on the terminal beside her, she switched over to the law enforcement account and began setting up a master passcode that would let her go through all of the facility\u2019s doors\u2026 undetected. Via Ghost Mode.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cThey don\u2019t understand what they\u2019re asking for,\u201d John MacNamera had groused at her two years ago, leaning back on his couch and blowing out a frustrated breath. \u201cThis \u2018Ghost Mode\u2019 is going to blow up in their faces one day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Audrey had sat quietly. Her father would explain without her asking. He always did. She had glanced down at the specs he was working with. There it was: Ghost Mode. She scanned over the instructions for using it, filing them away in her memory.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It was very fortunate that nobody in the hospital had any idea just how good her memory <i>was<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cEidetic\u201d was the term her mother used with her. She only had to read things once to remember them clearly and precisely. And her mother had sternly explained, after she got into a fight with one of her cousins about which of them was remembering an event \u201cright,\u201d that what she could do was extremely rare, a gift that she hadn\u2019t done anything to earn, and that it was rude to show it off and unkind to expect others to have it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Which, fortunately, meant that long before she left Deckard\u2019s World and began her run, she had become an old hand in concealing the full extent of her knowledge and recall. Nobody <i>expected<\/i> a kid to remember everything, down to the tiniest detail, so nobody\u2014except possibly her parents\u2014ever realized that she was <i>faking<\/i> it when she got less-than-perfect marks on a quiz or test, or claimed not to remember something that had happened when she was three.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Now, however, sitting at the terminal, she could still see the instructions for \u201cGhost Mode\u201d in her memory, and still hear her father grumbling about the mistake the security firm was making.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cWhen this mode is attached to a security code, no records are generated when the code is used,\u201d he\u2019d explained after a moment. \u201cSure, that\u2019s great for a situation where you think someone high up is compromised and you don\u2019t want them to know they\u2019re being investigated, or the police are on the way\u2026 but I can think of a million ways it could be abused.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cWhat are you going to do?\u201d Audrey had asked him.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"> \u201cI can\u2019t take it out. We can\u2019t have one package for clients who want Ghost Mode and another for clients who don\u2019t. The code\u2019s too integral.\u201d Her father had sighed. \u201cBut we can make two sets of documentation. Only the clients who <i>request<\/i> Ghost Mode will get instructions on how to enable it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">But it was always there, asked for or not, enabled or not. Now Jack keyed in the instructions for making her newly-minted security codes \u201cGhost Mode,\u201d hiding them from the general administrative registry as well. She\u2019d chosen a number combination that no one else used. Now it would open any door on any of the floors and there would be no record that the doors had opened at all.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Sure, she could have gone through the doors using any combination of the administrators\u2019 passcodes\u2014they were all in her head now\u2014but this code had a further advantage: she could share it with Kyra, and her friend would only need to remember one number.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She spent the next hour\u2014while a middle-aged woman, on the screen next to her, quietly droned on about the best jambalaya recipes\u2014studying the camera layouts and timing on the stairs between C Ward and A Ward, and the layout of the ground level. She had the escape route picked, the timing worked out, and everything memorized when she heard voices approaching. By the time four girls entered the library, she seemed to be doing poorly on an algebra quiz while listening to singers from centuries earlier admonish listeners: \u201cDon\u2019t Mess With My Toot-Toot.\u201d She got a few funny looks, but nobody seemed to suspect anything. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">They\u2019d never heard her listen to music before. They\u2019d never know that she listened to anything but zydeco. Now, though, there would be witnesses to the fact that this was Jane Doe 7439\u2019s music of choice. Everything in her record would point to a colony on the opposite side of the Helion system from Deckard\u2019s World. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>We can leave whenever we want,<\/i> she reassured herself. <i>As soon as I clean up Kyra\u2019s records so she\u2019s harder to trace.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That, she decided, would be her next stop once she was alone again. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Score one for zydeco music. The girls, muttering about how weird she was, left quickly with their books. Once they were gone, she logged back in as a top admin and got back to work. She opened up Kyra\u2019s file\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Oh. Shit.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">A cold chill flowed down her back. Her fingers shook as she typed. She didn\u2019t dare change much\u2014the Black Fox of Canaan Mountain was, after all, the facility\u2019s closest thing to a celebrity patient\u2014but she changed what she could. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">This was bad. This was very\u2026 <i>very<\/i> bad. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Her decision made, she switched over to the duty rosters and made subtle adjustments that would ensure a nice, wide open gap in coverage, all along her planned escape route, between 2 and 3 am. Scrolling through the daytime duty roster, she found the anomaly she was looking for. She switched back over to the law enforcement account and looked at the orderly\u2019s records again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It was even worse than she had thought.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Fuck.<\/i> She glanced up at the seemingly-oblivious woman at the front desk, wondering whether she was just killing time or paying closer attention to everything than it seemed. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It wouldn\u2019t matter. It couldn\u2019t matter. She couldn\u2019t <i>let<\/i> it matter. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She shut down the terminals when the dinner bell rang, and walked out of the library as calmly as she could, trying not to let it be too obvious that her skin was trying to crawl right off of her body. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She forced herself to eat her entire dinner. It was dry and tasteless in her mouth, and most of her attention was spent on keeping it down. From the few comments she could make herself focus on, everybody thought she was still out of sorts from her morning conversation with Stacey. She squirreled away a few rolls when nobody was looking.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">For later.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The woman was gone when she returned to the library, replaced by one of the regular evening-duty orderlies. Jack felt a tiny amount of the tension leave her spine as she worked. It only took her another two hours to get everything in place. Her hands shook a little as she shut down the terminal, spent a few minutes pretending to be a germaphobe and wiping down all of the terminals she had used that day, and left the library.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Normally she showered in the morning, but she felt like she stank of fear. After a quick shower, she killed time cleaning the room she and Kyra shared, wiping down every surface that she might have touched at any point. Would anybody bother dusting for fingerprints? She wasn\u2019t sure, but she didn\u2019t want to risk it. While she waited for Kyra to return for Lights Out, she ran over the plan again and again in her mind, rehearsing each step of the way, each possible complication.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It would work. It had to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Finally Kyra arrived, saying goodnight to Colette and Xi Hin before she entered their room.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYou\u2019ve been the talk of the Club,\u201d she said with a wry grin. \u201cNot that Stacey\u2019s sharing the story you told, thank God, but it bought you some legit cred. Especially with you being the insti\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cDon\u2019t let anybody give you meds tonight. If they do, fake swallowing them. Spit them out when nobody\u2019s looking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cOkay\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack walked up to Kyra, getting close enough that she could breathe the next words and her friend would still hear them, but nobody else possibly could. \u201cWe\u2019re leaving tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Kyra went still, staring at her in surprise and wonder. \u201cTonight?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cWhy?\u201d It was to her credit that she didn\u2019t even ask <i>how<\/i>, given that Jack had previously said they needed to get to A Ward first.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cThere\u2019s a transfer order in for you. For tomorrow at noon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/i> Kyra whisper-hissed in astonishment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cSomebody decided you\u2019re well enough to stand trial. They\u2019re shipping you back to New Dartmouth. And the mercenary in charge of taking you there is already here, pretending to be an orderly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cBut\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cDoesn\u2019t matter. We\u2019re going tonight. 2 am. Don\u2019t go to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Someone knocked on the door.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">As if controlled by the same set of puppet strings, Kyra and Jack retreated to their beds in tandem. \u201cCome in!\u201d Jack called.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The Victoria Holt-reading orderly stood in the doorway. Her name tag, no longer obscured, confirmed everything Jack had already learned about her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;margin-bottom: 1em;margin-top: 1em\"><tt>E. Logan<\/tt><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>They didn\u2019t even bother giving her a fake name\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The false orderly, a woman Jack now knew was really named Eve Logan, professional bounty hunter, entered the room with a smile that was just a hair too wide to be authentic, carrying a tray with pills on it. \u201cTime for bed, girls!\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Neither one of them were normally scheduled for bedtime sedation. Their eyes met for the briefest moment. Then Kyra was all smiles, reaching for the cup the merc was offering her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack accepted hers, fumbling the cup long enough to keep Logan from noticing that Kyra was pocketing her pills instead of putting them in her mouth. <i>She<\/i> was glad that her cousin Rob had gone through a \u201cclose-up magic\u201d kick and had insisted on teaching her several variations of the Vanishing Quarter. Eve Logan left a moment later, undoubtedly convinced that both girls would soon be sedated heavily enough that neither one would be up before noon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Kyra gave her a haunted look as the lights were lowered. Jack nodded. She had set a timer in the system. The lights would come partway back up at 2 am exactly, right as their door unlocked and all of the orderlies would have assignments to be nowhere nearby. Eve Logan, she knew, would be asleep in the administrative guest building by then; if she woke up for any reason, she\u2019d find her door and comms mysteriously locked and unresponsive until daybreak.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: 1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Glancing over at Kyra, barely visible in the dark, Jack had a feeling that both of them would still be wide awake when the lights came up.<\/p>\n<p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: The Changeling Game (Formerly Identity Theft) Author: Ardath Rekha Chapter: 17\/? Fandom: TCOR AU Rating: T Warnings: Adult themes, controversial subject matter, harsh language Category: Gen ","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"\u201cThe Changeling Game\u201d chapter 17 by Ardath Rekha","bgseo_description":"The lies have been told. Jack\u2019s staff account has been bought, with Riddick\u2019s reputation. Now Jack scrambles to tie off the loose threads she left hanging, and makes a disturbing discovery that forces her to accelerate the time-table for her escape with Kyra.","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fan-fiction","category-the-changeling-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1207,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/1207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}