Her finger hovered over the keyboard. She wasn’t supposed to be here. The city had lost the admin password years ago. She’d bypassed it with a backdoor she found in a 1999 hacking zine.

That’s when the power flickered.

Elara plugged in the serial cable, its nine pins a relic of a more tactile age. The Software Manager detected the PBX with a cheerful ding that sounded strangely optimistic. She began the upload of the new extension list—three hundred names, all typed in by hand from a PDF scan.

> ACKNOWLEDGED. VERBAL AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED. PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME AND FUNCTION INTO HANDSET 01.