~Chapter 16~

~June 27th, 2019- Regency Building, NY
Wraith had spent the night before in his small hotel room, updating a complex computer virus designed to infiltrate the Secretarial Desk at the Regency Building. It would worm its way into the system and make its way through the network to the Vault’s outside network system.
The Vault had two systems; one was the Vault’s outside network, which was on an open network to allow maintenance and monitoring of the system. The second part of the system was the Vault itself, which was on a closed network. Closed, except for the one little net connection that allowed the outside system to monitor the Vault’s database for corrupt data. One problem with the Vault’s compression program was a tendency to scramble data. The data was easily unscrambled, unless it was a Class 3 scramble, whereas a specialist was required. And, since the Taske Family outsourced a few specialized personnel to save money, a notice of a Class 3 data scramble would have to be called out to a Board-friendly company who would then send a technician who specialized in their compression program to fix the problem.
Wraith’s program mimicked a Class 3 scramble, causing an alert notice to flash on the Vault’s monitoring system. Then, all the Informer had to do was to intercept the call and take the place of the technician. He had planned for a similar eventuality back when Josh was first waging his personal war against the Board and its associates. All he had to do was update the virus’s infiltration program to account for updates to the Regency’s firewalls, and he was ready to go.
At 7:30AM, the virus entered the system through a backdoor Wraith had programmed into the server that monitored the secretary’s desk and, after making its way through the server network to the server that monitored the Vault’s outside system, released the string of code that would fake the Class 3 alert in the Technician’s desk in the Regency’s Files & Record Department.
At 8:15AM, Wraith’s Shadow Tech X-Cell smart phone rang with the diverted call from the Regency Building’s Tech Group.
“Shadow Tech Incorporated, this is James.”
Wraith’s voice was smooth and professional, yet friendly and welcoming.
“Yeah, I work for Taske Research, and we have a problem with one of our data storage units.”
“What kind of a problem?”
The Tech paused a moment, “Class 3 data scramble.”
Wraith smiled slightly, “Okay, I don’t have any members of our Service Team in your immediate area, but I can have one there in, say… half an hour?”
The man on the other line sounded relieved, “Okay, thanks. I’ll tell security down at the front desk to let him up when he gets here.”
“Thank you for your service.”
Wraith hung up and went to the bed where a black Shadow Tech Inc. bag and Service Team uniform lay neatly on the covers. Shadow Tech was publicly owned by computer tycoon Mike Murdock. Behind the scenes Wraith actually owned the company, and he supplied Mike with a lot of the company’s ground-breaking discoveries. Little did the tech world know that Shadow Tech Incorporated, the company that had beat Microsoft out of the top ranking software manufacturers and now threatened to send Apple to second place in the tech industry, was run by an Underworld Informer who had barely finished High School, never went to college, and had officially died almost twenty years ago.

At 9:01AM, a technician in the black-and-grey uniform of the Shadow Tech Service Team strode through one of the large glass doors in the main lobby of the Regency Building. He walked over to the Secretary’s Desk and smiled at the pretty brunette behind the counter. With just an initial observation, Wraith knew her name was Vicky. She was vain, slightly lonely, tired, and almost desperate to please.
“Hey, your Tech Department called and said there was an issue we needed to look at.”
Vicky checked her computer screen and nodded, popping gum loudly between her teeth.
“Aw, yeah… Just go over to the Security Desk and check in with them. They’ll sign you through.”
Wraith nodded and smiled at her as he turned away, “Okay, thanks.”
Wraith approached the Security Desk and handed his ID to the guard at the computer.
The guard, whose badge said his name was “Michael”, scanned the card and looked up to confirm the man pictured was the man before him.
“James Regal?”
Wraith smiled amiably and nodded, “Yep, that’s me!”
“Michael” gestured to satchel at Wraith’s side.
“What’s in there?”
Wraith shrugged, “Oh, laptop, some backup software, a few tools…”
“Let me see.”
Wraith handed the satchel to the guard who took his time rifling through it.
The guard nodded and, satisfied, handed him his satchel along with a clipboard with a check-in roster.
“Please write down the date, time, and sign your name.”
Wraith accepted the clipboard and the accompanying pen and wrote the required information in the designated blanks. Signing his name as “James Regal” was easy, almost second nature. After all, it was his name, in what seemed a lifetime ago.
He handed the guard back the clipboard and was given a laminated “Visitor” ID tag with another card attached to it. Wraith knew what the second card was, but he let the guard explain it anyways, just as if it was his first time there.
“The second card there is a Security Clearance card. It has the floor number you are allowed access to, along with a data chip that contains who you are, who you work for, and why you are in the building. I warn you, do not, I repeat, do not, try to go to any other floors besides the one that card gives you authorization to visit. Understand?”
Wraith nodded and looked the card over, as if he had never seen it before.
“Got it, thanks.”
He turned away, then back again with a sheepish grin on his face.
“Uh, where are the elevators?”
“Michael” pointed to the hallway between the Security Desk and the Secretary’s Desk.
“Just down there.”
Wraith thanked the guard again, and headed for the six elevators that allowed access to the upper levels of the building. When he got there, he pushed the button for “V.L.30”, or “Vault Level 1” as his clearance card stated.
The Regency Inc. Building had 51 floors and 4 sub-floors. 35 of the above-ground floors were easily accessible, while the remaining 16 were restricted to only those with the highest clearance level. The sub-levels were mainly parking garages, but the very lowest level, “X.SL.”, or “Restricted Sub-Level”, housed the building’s emergency power generators.
There were five people in the elevator when Wraith got in, two got on at the Main Lobby while the other three came up from the Sub-Levels. The elevator had two stops before reaching “V.L.30”, and there was only Wraith and one other man when the door opened onto the thirtieth floor.

Samuel Grayson watched Wraith get off the elevator, his harsh gray eyes calmly tracking the Informer until the doors had closed. At one point, just before the doors closed, Wraith turned and his clear green eyes met Grayson’s cloudy gray ones. A flicker of recognition crossed over Wraith’s face, and then the doors were shut.
Samuel leaned against the back of the elevator, smiling to himself.

Wraith never lost his calm, but the sight of Samuel Grayson sent a shiver up his spine. And the look the businessman had gave him made it clear that Grayson had somehow recognized him.
But how? Wraith was a nobody! If, somehow, someone discovered Wraith’s real name, all they would find was a death certificate, a grave with what was supposed to be his cremated remains, and nothing else. Could Grayson know who Wraith used to be?
Shaken slightly, Wraith filed the encounter and the disturbing problem away and turned back to the mission at hand. The Vault took up the thirtieth and thirty-first floors of the Regency Building. Rows upon rows of data nodes and servers housed what was likely the biggest data base on the planet. Even to someone like Wraith, who learned complex computer programming from speed-reading library books and tech magazines, the very concept was staggering.
Scattered among the racks of blinking hardware were twenty-one work-stations. Ten on the first level, ten on the second, and one monitoring station just outside of Level 1’s elevator. It was this station that Wraith approached and identified himself to the tech behind the computer.
“Hey, James Regal, Shadow Tech Service Team, I heard you had a problem you needed me to look at?”
The Vault Tech was a younger man, maybe twenty-five, and had short blonde hair. He smiled and showed Wraith to one of the workstations.
“Yeah, Class 3 Data Scramble. We really need to get some of our guys trained in fixing things like that.”
Wraith nodded and withdrew the laptop from his satchel.
“Well, what program are you using, the Shade 0.3? I hear the boys in the Research Division are planning to release the Shade 0.4 in the next year or two. It isn’t supposed to have the scrambling problems the 0.3 and 0.2 have.”
In truth, Shadow Tech had actually finished the Shade 0.5 compression program, but was holding off on releasing it for a few years. They also had another program they were struggling to design, the Ghost 0.1. The compression program Wraith had written for the Den in Josh Taske’s house was actually the Ghost 0.2, and he had given the Research Division enough information to get them started, but had decided to let them figure it out on their own. He hated releasing technology to early.
Wraith plugged two cords into data ports on the side of the workstation. Then he opened a number of programs on the laptop and sat back to watch.
The Tech was looking over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
Wraith glanced up at the Tech, then back at his screen.
“Running diagnostic software to ascertain where exactly the scramble occurred. I’m also running a reverse-scrambling program that takes the scrambled data, de-compresses it, then re-compresses it, eliminating the scramble. And, of course, I’m running a search program to see if there is any other scrambled data you either haven’t been alerted to, or was masked by the initial alert.”
Really, Wraith was running a search program for information on James’ Villa and personnel files on Josh’s team of assassins. Any information he found on the team, he copied onto the laptop and initiated a Class 4 scramble on the original data. A Class 4 was literally unheard of in the tech world. In fact, Wraith had specifically designed the Class 4 to eliminate unwanted data without leaving a trail for someone to follow.
An alert flashed on Wraith’s screen, telling him the Villa files had been located and copied. This surprised the Informer, since the Villa search had been just a general key-word search. It should have taken longer to find the Villa files than to find the personnel files and scramble them.
“What’s that mean?”
Wraith glanced back up at the Tech, “It means that no other files were corrupted.”
The Tech looked relieved, “Oh, that’s good.”
Another alert flashed, telling Wraith the personnel files had been copied and scrambled. Wraith unplugged the laptop and stood up.
The Tech looked at him in surprise, “That’s it? Last time it took the guy a full hour to unscramble the data.”
Wraith shook his head and patted the laptop.
“New programs, doesn’t take as long as it used to.”
The Tech nodded and, looking uncertainly at Wraith, walked back to the monitoring console. He checked something on the screen and nodded again.
“Hey, whaddya know? You fixed it.”
Wraith smiled and walked towards the elevator.
“Well, that is my job.”
And with that, Wraith proceeded to leave the building.