She was no spy, no secret agent, and had no clandestine skills. Her one claim to fame was being able to sneak quietly out of her parents’ house in suburban Wilmington to go out partying with her friends during high school. But Parkowski was smart, and more importantly, she was observant. Maybe she was overconfident, but she knew she was able to get into the room.
Thankfully, she had no mission to plan for, so she had plenty of free time. No one would notice the nice, young female engineer making the rounds to all her friends and colleagues and being social, and definitely not spending too much time in the senior engineers’ hallway.
But, there was more traffic in that hallway than she expected. The special projects division’s high bay was the next one over, and for whatever reason quite a few people were traveling through the ILIAD mission’s high bay to that one. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be using the NASA room’s door.
Parkowski decided to start checking the hallway scientifically, with a pattern. She would get up from her cubicle, speak briefly with Kim or one of her other friends in the cube farm, and then meander over to the hallway and walk towards the NASA room. Just past the door, and the bend in the hallway, was a water fountain. She would walk nonchalantly past the door, take a sip of water, and then walk back as slowly as she could.
She did this every half hour on Wednesday and Thursday. There was a lot of traffic in the hallway, but very little around the NASA door. Rosen slipped in there, twice, as did Pham a few times. She saw a few people associated with the special projects division go in once as a group but didn’t catch their exit.
Friday confirmed her suspicions. Dr. Rosen entered the room at noon on the dot. That made three days in a row.
Parkowski surmised that he went in there for some kind of meeting. Why else would he go in at the same time each day?
Making a leap in logic, she assumed that he would be there on Monday. This couldn’t be easier. All she had to do was walk up to him as he typed in the code, strike up a conversation, and take note of what he inputted. Then, come back later when no one was around and input the code herself.
Parkowski bounded into work on Monday, her plan set and ready to go.
The building was a ghost town — no ILIAD missions were planned. But as she walked in, she saw Dr. Rosen and Dr. Pham up on the raised stage, having an animated conversation with each of them holding a different piece of VR control hardware.
She shrugged and went to a cube to check her emails.
At eleven fifty-five, she got up from her desk and walked out into the hallway. Parkowski got a sip of water from the fountain and turned around to see if Dr. Rosen would go to the NASA door.
He didn’t.
She waited a few minutes, but the hallway was empty.
Parkowski was a little surprised — he was off his schedule — but played it off, walking nonchalantly back to her desk.
This was not good.
She was already off her baseline plan.
Both Pham’s and Rosen’s office doors were closed. She wondered if something was going on.
She switched cubicles to one where she had a good view of the ILIAD mission area and the entrance to the hallway.
Half an hour later, as she was eating her lunch, she saw Dr. Pham walk quickly through the high bay to the hallway.
On a hunch, Parkowski put down her sandwich and followed him.
Dr. Pham made a beeline for the NASA room’s door.
This was her opportunity.
She waited until he was about to input the code before speaking up. “Hey boss, how’s everything going today?”
Pham spun around to look at her. “Oh, hi, Grace. It’s going well. How is everything with you?”
“It’s going great,” she replied, leaning against the wall next to the door. “How’s your week looking?”
“Not too bad,” the Ph.D. said as he hunched over to use the cipher lock. Parkowski peered over. He inputted one, five, three, and two together, then four. “How about you?”
“Staying busy and ready to get back on the sticks,” she replied with a smile on her face.
“Ah, yes,” Pham said as he opened the handle of the large, heavy door. “Well, I’ve got a meeting. I’ll talk with you later.”
“Sure, see you later,” Parkowski replied. She walked back to the high bay and her cube as the metal door swung closed with a clang.
Parkowski spent the rest of the day checking out where the security cameras in the hallway were. She found four, two near the high bay and two farther down by the NASA door. But, where they pointed and were able to see, she wasn’t sure. She thought she might be clear if she stuck to the left side of the hallway and slipped over to the right where the door was at the very end, but she wasn’t positive that was the case.
This was her chance, and she didn’t want to blow it on a hunch. The cameras seemed to be protecting the classified area beyond the hallway rather than the NASA room, but there was no way to be sure without testing out her theory.
She considered abandoning the whole idea. Parkowski went out to the parking lot to get some fresh air when she saw the security guard sitting at his desk.
Parkowski had another idea.
“Hey, Bert,” she said as she walked up to the desk.
The elderly man turned from his paperback to look at her. “Grace!” he said loudly. “Sorry ‘bout your Birds. I was rooting for them yesterday.”
“I know, I know,” Parkowski said as she leaned against the desk. Behind Bert, she could see a number of black-and-white feeds from different security cameras throughout the Aering facility. The monitor changed the cameras every couple of seconds to show different sets of cameras.
“You guys are falling apart, what happened?” the security guard asked as his eyes went back to his book. “I thought they were going to run away with the division.”
“Injuries,” she replied as she watched the camera feeds out of the corner of her eye. All of the ones for the hallway she was interested in were all on the same screen as the system cycled through. Her brain worked quickly to process them as Bert rambled on about playoff scenarios.
From what she could tell, her initial thought was fairly accurate. She could hug the left wall, and switch to the right side at the very end. If she kept herself in the corner while inputting the code and then slid in with the door as it opened she could avoid the camera positioned diagonally at the end of the hallway staring down towards the special projects bay.
“My Rams have been on a run,” Bert finished and took a sip of his Diet Coke can, waiting for Parkowski to continue the conversation.
“Four in a row, right?” Parkowski asked. Her stomach flipped continuously; she was so excited about what was going to come next. She was finally going to get to the bottom of all this.
“Yes ma’am,” he replied. “Here’s how I see the rest of the year playing out…”
Half an hour later she was back at her desk. Theoretically, the Aering plant was a twenty-four-hour facility, but in practice, everyone was gone by five or six.
Parkowski walked out at five to her car and put her purse under the front seat. She texted DePresti that she was staying late. Then she turned around and went back into the building.
“Forget something?” the evening security guard asked.
She nodded and badged in.
Parkowski then went into the women’s bathroom and sat down on a stall. No one else entered.
She waited until six-thirty and left the bathroom.
The high bay was completely empty. It was almost eerie. The lights were on, the computer monitors glowed, and the only person in the room was a young spacecraft operator, more junior than even Parkowski, tasked with keeping the ACHILLES units alive from a console underneath the giant TV screen.