Snippet #2317855

Madison rifled through the blueprints of her new home-to-be for the fourth time that day, refreshing the layout in her memory and making sure she hadn't missed anything yet. She'd memorized every nook and cranny of the building, but it never hurt to double check, right? It was going to be a challenge to work in a house designed by a domestic architect who hadn't left any room for modifications. There were no secret basements or sliding panels in the walls to hide weapons or bugging devices, which made Madison slightly uncomfortable. Improvisation would have to be key.

Obviously Scarlet agreed, because the next thing Madison knew was that her former partner was batting her eyelashes and slipping into the role of an airhead socialite with disturbing ease. "Good grief," Madison muttered, suppressing the urge to gag at the sickeningly sweet display. She shut the file and stuffed it into her purse before grabbing a second cupcake and standing up. She didn't bother slipping into her role as Elizabeth Bennet yet; she would practice that at the airport when she absolutely had to, and not a second before.

"Promise me we'll never be that disgusting," Madison muttered to Jason under her breath, stepping up behind him as he skimmed through the mission file. She suppressed a shudder, watching Olivia take over Scarlet's body. It was very, very unsettling to see the normally stoic and serious woman turn into a gushing sap in a split second.

Wrenching her gaze away from the playacting couple, Madison turned back to her own partner for this mission and summoned a bright smile. Damn, she was getting good at this fake-smiling thing. Ha.

"Alright, so I took the liberty of discussing the technological parameters of this mission, and it turns out we're going to stay on the primitive side for a while," she told Jason. She was the team's IT specialist for this mission, so it had been her responsibility to figure out which gadgets they could bring aside from the basics. "That gentlemen's club we're suspicious of? They're pretty high tech already so we don't want anything sophisticated enough to get on their radar. That's why we're going to be stuck with..." and here she paused, rummaging through her purse to bring out two identical phones--Motorola AME 2000's. They looked like regular phones, simple enough not to arouse any suspicion. She grinned, pretty satisfied at her loot. "They only just announced these at the RSA Conference, really," she explained. "Over two grand each, with double encryption in the VPN which is great. It operates on two different processors, has tamper protection for tokens, keys, and certificates. It also meets FIPS 140-2 Level 3 and National Security Administration Suite B encryption standards, and can perform high-assurance cryptographic operations. On the second--" And that's when she stopped short, realizing that half of what she was saying was probably not even making sense to Jason.

"Sorry," she apologized sheepishly, holding out the phone for him to take. "It's the MIT brat in me, I get a bit carried away. Basically, it's the phone you want when you're undercover. I rooted it though, so it's not obvious to anyone that it's so high tech--you can set up two accounts on there for yourself as Jason, and for your alias as Greg without worrying about hackers. You can only access them depending on which password you use, so no one can crack the second account without your fingerprints and unique body temperature signature--practically foolproof, I promise."