Olivia was painfully scrawny. It was to the point that her friends winced whenever they saw her. Usually she would add layers of clothing to hide her figure (or lack thereof) but it was August, in the middle of a deadly heatwave. There was no avoiding her knobby knees as they stuck out from her shorts, or how her skin clung to her bones. It was embarrassing.
“Try to eat something” Clarissa coaxed, concern written across her features.
“I have!” Olivia almost yelled. “Have you seen how much I’ve eaten today?” She started to list while ticking off her fingers, “Two doughnuts for breakfast plus an extra large jamba juice, a whole grapefruit, most of a medium sized watermelon, two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, an energy drink and a large salad! That’s not to mention the gallon of water I have already had today. I can’t eat anymore!”
Clarissa shook her head, “this yo-yo dieting isn’t good for you”
“It isn’t a diet” Olivia muttered under her breath, out loud she said, “I know, I just need to find a good balance.” Which technically wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t a truth about this particular situation.
“Well, at least make sure you eat something healthy for dinner and keep hydrated!” Clarissa mentioned as she broke away from Olivia to unlock her car.
“Yes mom,” Olivia called sarcastically.
“I’m not your mother! And if I was I wouldn't let you get into this state” Clarissa growled.
“I live on my own, my mother has nothing to do with my diet,” Olivia called back as she reached her navy colored Mercedes. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”
Olivia slid into her front seat and immediately regretted it. The heat hit her like a wall of over cooked mackerel, unpleasant in every way. She quickly turned on the car to get the fan going and just sat there, letting gravity act more heavily than normal on her. She hated this time of year, or to be more accurate, this time of the month.
Last night was the New moon. A boon for social workers and medical professionals everywhere but it was a blight for Olivia. For her, gravity was heavier, pushing all of the water from her cells, massively dehydrating her and reducing her body to mere skin and bones. This happened every time the moon waned.
Luckily things were looking up for Olivia, the moon was beginning is waxing face and she would have water pulled back into her body. By the time the moon was full again Olivia would be severely curvations, it could also be a rough time but it was usually much more fun.
Olivia never found out why her body was so attuned with the moon. Neither her mother nor her sisters ever complained of the same problem. They had “Normal” female problems something that Olivia was delighted to not share with them. Olivia had seen specialists, and non specialists to see if there was something wrong with her, but all anyone could summize was that nothing was wrong.
She signed as the air around her began to chill. She couldn’t wait for fall to come, but today she couldn’t dwell on that. Today she had work to do.
Sometimes it was annoying having two jobs, the stress of coordinating schedules and requesting time of was more than a little annoying. But having a consistent alibi and identity cover more than outweighed the inconvenience.
Because of Olivia’s special relationship with the moon, she was able to cultivate and hone her skills as a master thief. That’s quite a silly name for what she was. She didn’t take wallets or steal credit cards, that is what a thief did, there was no art to it, to majesty. Just cold actions, for petty reasons for petty rewards. Olivia had higher ambitions in mind.
It was one thing to steal something, but it was quite another to be so gracefully and unobtrusive that the mark never knew that they had been stolen from. This is what Olivia strived for. With her frequent body transformations, Olivia could pursue many different types of jobs, that demanded a wide set of skills.
Tonight, what she needed most was to be as small as possible. The mark had beautiful sprawling grounds with cultivated gardens and manicured lawns. Olivia had to locate the exterior Keep (yes, an actual keep with turrets and everything) slip inside, hack into the private server and recover the client’s requested information.
Any other time of the month and Olivia wouldn’t be able to slip in and out unnoticed, but tonight she was a wafe, hardly more than a shadow.
Olivia parked her car most of a mile away from the house. Luckily the estate was protected on three sides by a cultivated forest, a nightmare for security but it made for a stunning backdrop for elaborate get togethers.
Tonight’s party was Asianic themed, paper lanterns dotted the acres of land. Down by the main pond there was a crew of men setting up for the pyrotechnics show to be had later in the evening. Olivia slipped from the edge of the woods into the crowd of people talking and laughing near the house.
Olivia had changed from her work clothes into a white buttoned dress shirt, with black slacks and a scarlet cumberbund, the same as all of the other waiters and waitresses working the event. She wound her way through the tables of fine silk tablecloths and elaborately decorated china, until she reached the kitchens, there she picked up a tray horderves, and wound her way through the grounds, finding pockets of party goers and offering them refreshments. After her fourth trip to the kitchen Olivia meandered down the north end of the property towards the keep.
The place looked as bright and festive as the rest of the grounds, the lights in the windows were on and paper lanterns garnished the wrought iron gate and lower branches of a nearby tree. It was beautiful and looked alive, but Olivia knew better. There was no one inside, it was a server room, sealed to protect from the elements, not meant for hosting any number of people.
Olivia circled the building once, making sure that no one had her in their line of sight and efficiently shutting down all of the security cameras. (This part of the job seems relatively easy but, in fact it had taken weeks of planning, hacking into the security system, planting files, erasing other files, making a back trail and covered up the back trail with useless but seemingly working code.) Olivia took off her waiters costume revealing a black, tight leotard. She slipped through the bars of the gate (a mere 6 inches wide) and stood at the entrance of the server room.
Here she had to carefully open an access panel to the left of the door. Inside was a set of three fuses, the first would trip the power to the servers, the second would trip the power to the security cameras, and the third was trip the silent alarms. Olivia shook her head, and mumbled while she used a micro screwdriver to lift the nearly invisible panel above the fuses to reveal another set of fuses, the second to the left was the one she needed. With barely a whisper of cloth, she had the fuse pulled, the panel replaced and the doors of the server room standing slightly ajar.
She allowed herself half a smile. She silently counted the servicer banks until she came to the 17th, there she opened it’s case and plugged in her hardware. Olivia took a few deep breaths to steady herself, then jacked in.
Jacking in during her depleted cycle was not only very painful but also extremely dangerous. With so little water in her body, she struggled to keep a large enough electrical current flowing from her nervous system to the plug in order to transfer data and really delve deep into the server's information. It couldn’t be helped. Any other time she would have been to big to squeeze through the gate, there might have been other methods she could use, but none would have been as elegant.
Olivia worked quickly, lifting the files she was getting paid for. She also grabbed a few random files to keep for herself, a sort of blackmail. Then she picked more random files to add to her download. Will any luck they would be thrown off by the random assortment of files taken, that is if they ever noticed they were gone in the first place.
After the download was complete Olivia started on her cover code. She had spent more than a few hours studying the code used by this security company, and practicing mimicking it. As she began her withdraw from the system, Olivia painted a artwork of code to cover her retreat, with in it she build a little surprise for anyone who wanted to unravel what she wrote. With any luck someone would pull those strings.
She regained full consciousness as she pulled out the jack. She would need water, lots and lots of water after this but that would have to wait. Olivia quickly unplugged her hardware and wiped down the server and its frame. With quick steps she left the server room, resealed it and slipped back into the night air.
She paused outside the door, there was a thick tension in the air, something that Olivia didn’t feel comfortable with. She hurriedly put on her serving outfit and made her way back to the main building. She was intending to head back to the kitchen for a few more rounds but she was suddenly stopped when a large hand gripped her arm.
