Vessel

by Matthew Bryant

  Ten minutes would have been ample to secure a means of approach to each of the four server rooms. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour when the datapad vibrates three times in my hands, a signal from Valerie that there’s been a security breach. Time to go.

  I keep the virtual gear stashed in my pack for the time being. If I’m going to stand a chance of going unnoticed by the guards and the data thieves, I’m going to need to stay below both radars. Switching to radio silence, I make certain all electronic devices are powered off before moving to the closest entry point that Valerie had pointed out.

  The last time I broke into an underground building, it was underneath a single story shack. This time around, it’s below a full-sized sky scraper. From what I could tell from the schematics, the two aren’t interconnected, both supported by separate power grids, intranets, air conditioning and sewage. The only thing shared is an address.

  Around the side I find a massive array of industrial air conditioning units. Being a cool night, only a handful of them are active. Remembering the schematics, I select the third from the left, slide on my gloves, then pull out my hand drill. I match the ratchet size to the bolts and make short work of dismantling the cover, then the fan, and set them both to the side.

  Scooping up a bit of gravel from the ground, I drop it down the exposed shaft and wait for the echo back up. It comes back quickly. Probably only twenty or thirty feet. Not too bad.

  Sliding my legs over the side, I position my hands and feet on alternate sides of the shaft, then loosen my grip just enough to slide safely down to join the gravel at the bottom. It’s dark down here, but spacious enough for me to crawl through without incident.

  It takes a bit of maneuvering to position myself to crawl through the ventilation shaft face-first. I know from the schematics that it is one-hundred and twenty-seven feet to my target location. Given around five feet for so for chest to toe, and around four inches wrist to knuckle for each fist, I need a count just shy of five hundred fists. Flipping on the headlight above my ear, I begin the shuffle through the small crawl space, one fist length at a time.

  Once I get the rhythm down, the traveling goes relatively quickly, using small motions to propel my body fluidly through the shaft while keeping my weight evenly distributed. Keeping count in my head, I find the opening to a darkened room just before I hit four-hundred ninety. The small door's latch is on my side and I unlock it swiftly, letting the grate swing uncontested into the room below. Slipping head-first through the opening, I drop down into a roll across a long conference table.

  I could have found a room with a smaller likelihood of surveillance cameras, but I feel more than confident that this room isn’t being monitored and offers close access to the elevators. Slinking down under the table just in case, I get a good view of the door.

  Potentially locked, but I can bet that opening the door would set off an alert as well. There’s no guarantee, but a place with this much information is bound to have unseen security measures. Extracting a piece of copper twine as I approach the door, I measure out around four feet before securing one end to the door handle and the other to the metal latch embedded in the door frame. I try the handle, but find it locked as suspected. Tools out, I have it opened in only a few breaths, then slip in and out swiftly before leaping across the hallway to the closed elevator doors.

  Grabbing my drop key from my belt strap, I jam it into the single hole across the right lobby door, then slide the two panels open, revealing the elevator shaft behind. From my vantage, I can’t tell if the car is above or below, but I know I need to drop seven levels to be within range of the first server room. Leaping to the closest cable, I wrap my legs around the course, woven metal and allow myself to slide down, keeping count of the lobby doors as I make my way down to the ninth sub floor.

  Gripping a ledge to the side, I pull myself from the cable and clamp myself in, making sure to stay clear of the path of any passing car. From here, I should be within the proximity of the first server room. Pulling out the virtual gear, I replace my gloves and rest the eye-gear over my head, tightening the straps to make them secure, then power up the small terminal attached to my belt.

  It only takes a moment for the system to boot and a wireframe overlay appears around the corners. I can detect all of the available access points in the server room, but I can’t reach any of them. I assume I would have to be in the room to do so. More importantly, I can’t detect any movement of data from the location. While I can’t be certain of what I’m looking for, I’m fairly certain it would be something noticeable. One down, three more to check, I power down the gear, strip and store, then return to my regularly scheduled snooping.

  Three floors down and another seventy-eight feet of ventilation and I find the next server room with about the same level of success. All sealed off with no activity. My thoughts drift back to the video I’d watched with Cellar. If they’ve made it to the server room past all of the security, then I don’t have much time to locate them.

  Expanding my search will most likely ping me as a threat, but there’s no time left to worry about counter-measures. If I don’t hit them at the source, the mission fails. I can’t even fathom the consequences of what that means, but I’m fairly certain I don’t want to find out.

  I log into the intranet and spread through the building. The ping comes from the lowest northwest corner. The last place I would have checked. I don’t stow the gear this time, I keep it up and running as I exit the shaft, hit the halls, and race down to the elevator nearest the server room.

  All of the halls are clear, the activity must be down below. Drop key in hand, I jam it into the small hole and throw the doors wide, giving only half a breath before leaping to the cables and counting floors through my rapid descent.

  There’s no easy way through this time around. Instead, I tap into the security through the virtual gear and force the exterior doors open, giving me a clear visual of the chaos ahead. Guards have taken point around the corners, keeping an eye on the sealed server room doors. They don’t seem too suspecting of the elevator behind them. Their loss.

  Swinging across the gap to the clear ground ahead, I get my first dose of ‘alternative measures.’

  Barking.

  Two large dogs take notice of a strange man rushing towards them and yank at their leashes, surprising a guard in full riot gear to the action behind him. Yanking my tranq pistol from its holster, I manage to hit both dogs before they’re loosed on me, but there’s no way to penetrate a fully armored guard. His rifle manages to swing towards my position, but not before I’ve closed the gap, dodging the sluggish approach of the dogs and leaping high over the crouched man, planting a foot on his shoulder and propelling myself up through the ceiling tile and into the dark world of rubber wiring and plastic tubing just above the server room.

  The top is solid as I’d expected, but I don’t slide the way I’d wanted, forced to scoot my way across to be clear of the now shattered tile and exposure to the threat below. Even with my proximity, I can’t penetrate the walls to access the data streams below.

  I hope I don’t need much. There’s no time to play guess and check. I fish the small drill from my satchel and switch the head, dropping my ratchet piece to be lost in the dark and favoring a half inch bit instead. Sparks and metal shavings go flying as I bore down several inches before the resistance fades.

  That did it. Just enough of a peephole to see four streams flowing to the hub and up through the wires. Accessing the virus file Valerie had given me, I drag and drop it in a virtual interface once into each of the streams before disconnecting and ripping my phone from my pocket.

  It takes a painfully long time for the damned thing to boot. When I finally get to the home screen, I open our line and tap out a single, “Done.” I’ve barely hit send before the power goes out and I’m left alone in a darkness filled with deafening shouts.

  Curious for the fruits of my labor, I peer through the hole into a room dimly lit by
the backup generators. No longer secured by the magnetic locks, the doors fly open and armed guards rush in, flashing gunfire at the baffled infiltrators. One by one they hit the ground, each jerking then slumping under the chorus of a vicious boom. Their bodies lie in perfect peace while dark circles begin to expand away from them.

  Wait a second. Dark circles? That’s not right.

  “There are only four bodies. What happened to the one who just rushed in?”

  Shit.

  Thirty-Four

  I waste no time crawling to the corner of the room. It’s only a matter of moments before they realize that I never made it into the room and am still stuck in the ceiling.

  Popping a tile out of place, I pull the pins on two mini flash bangs and do a quick four-count, casting one down each hallway before squeezing my eyes shut and slamming the leather palms of gloved hands to my ears. Even with the precautions, my vision goes red behind my lids and a shrill pitch resonates through my ears.

  My fingers grip the edge tightly and I pull myself through the opening, dropping down head-first and tucking into a roll until I reach my feet on the other side of the dim, red hallway. Those present in the hallway are still stunned in the chaos of zero warning while I sprint towards the elevator doors.

  With no power, they’re still closed and incapable of succumbing to any electronic means. Falling back to the traditional methods, I have my drop key in hand as I slide the last few feet to where the hole waits for me. Doors disengage instantly and I push them open enough to slide through, nearly leaping for the cables before I realize that they’re no longer present.

  Damned elevator must have moved.

  Instead of up, I drop down a few feet, gripping the edge and securing myself out of sight of the guards in the hallway while I dig out my magnetic grips. Not the ideal way of ascending, but it’s all I have time for. Sliding over to a corner, I work quickly to find my groove of engaging and disengaging the locks across the iron girders to scale my way back up the thirteen floors to ground level.

  By the time the guards have pulled themselves together enough to check the open elevator doors, I’ve already ascended several dozen feet. With automatics, they could probably pick me off, but not without doing some serious damage to the elevator shaft. Even the gunfire in the server room was controlled single rounds.

  Before I can decide whether or not I should be preparing evasive maneuvers, a loud crack is followed by the steady hum of electricity. The timing of the blackout was too deliberate for it to have been a coincidence, but I can’t figure out why they would turn the power back on. Have I been discredited as a threat?

  The sound of grinding gears echoes through the shaft and the girders I’m attached to begin to rattle. That can’t be good. From above, I can see the bottom of the elevator car growing quickly as the distance between us closes. Pulling the helmet back over my head, I find the information for the pair of exterior elevator doors below me and set them to open.

  The doors split apart and I swing through the doorway with only a few seconds to spare before the elevator car comes rushing past, sending a gust of warm wind across my back. The halls are a bright white with no place to hide, but at least the floor is uninhabited at the moment.

  I forgot to check what floor I’m on, but the layout is about the same. Judging by memory, I rush towards the elevator across the building. The open hallways don’t make it an exceptionally difficult venture. Only a few turns and I spy the familiar doors and buttons down the hall. Before I can even bring up the information, the doors open on their own, revealing a handful of armed guards in tactical positions.

  Not good.

  Sliding to a hard stop, I reverse my direction and head back the way I came. I probably should have continued using the same elevator shaft after the car dropped below me, but I wanted to throw off their scent a bit. No dice. By the time I head back to the other elevator, the car has returned with yet another entourage of unhappy guards.

  Surrounded, it’s back to the vents for me. From my vantage, there are only a handful of doors with wide enough gaps between their neighbors to ensure an air conditioning vent large enough to enter. With the electricity on, I don’t have to bother fishing for my picks and hitting the tumblers. In fact, the lock is disengaged with little more than the wave of my hand.

  I ram my shoulder into the door in the same instant my fingers twist the knob, knocking it back and removing me from the line of fire. Kicking the door shut behind me, I wave my hands again, securing the lock in place before scanning the room. A bit to my surprise and much more to my dismay, the room is full of clear glass doors, each illuminated from the inside with a subtle blue glow, and each displaying dozens of computers with no monitors. I just holed up in one of the four server rooms.

  Guards at the door ready to gun me down, I’m cornered in the very thing I was meant to protect. I check the rooms hopelessly for vents, but find them far too small to be of any use. In a panic, my mind begins to cycle.

  Probably a different system entirely to keep the room cold. I could try to escape out the front with my last two flash bangs, but the same trick probably won’t work twice. The walls are solid, it would take too long to make a hole in the ceiling large enough for me to escape through, but even then I would be surrounded on the outside with nowhere to go, only making them work a little bit harder to catch me. Even if I tried to come out peacefully, they gunned down the other infiltrators in cold blood. This can’t end here. I’ve come too far. I’m out of options.

  Keeping a close eye on the door locks, I withdraw my phone and dial my handler. A mechanical voice answers instantly to inform me that the person I am dialing can not be reached and to leave a message after the tone. I hang up instead.

  Have they cut communications? That doesn’t make sense. If they did, how would I get voicemail?

  There’s a slamming sound from the doors. At first I think they’re trying to break in, then I realized a piece of the wall has slid down and covered my one and only escape entirely, soon followed by the sound of rushing air.

  My first thought is that it’s a cooling cycle, but glancing at the vents shows something off. Lifting my visor for a closer look, I can just make out faint wisps of air, but they’re not rushing into the room as I originally suspected. They’re rushing out.

  Oh God.

  Visor back down, I begin searching frantically for a security measure. Surrounded by a virtual world of flowing data and file folders, I can’t find anything useful. Nothing around the vents. Nothing around the doors. The air is leaving the room at an alarming rate, thinning my breath and making me dizzier by the second.

  Just like the library. The vents aren’t for air conditioning, they’re vacuums. They’re removing all air from the room.

  Not sure how much longer I’ll have air, I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with whatever I can find. Darkness is already creeping around the edges of my peripheral. Not good. I have no choice but to try and break the seal with one good breath.

  Scrambling to the top of a stack of servers, I pull out my drill, bit still in place, and hold it to the ceiling. Sparks and shavings of hot metal pepper my unguarded face, but the payout will be worth it. Lungs burning, ears ringing, I feel compression all around me. Despite my drowsiness, my eyes are bulging like they’re about to pop out of my head.

  Resistance ends as the bit punctures through. I throw the drill to the ground, press my face hard against the hole and take a long draw of air. It refills my lungs, but the pressure is still all around me. Even with the newfound air hole, pressure is building in the room and the vents won’t cease. Maybe if I’d had time to cover them with something and slow their insatiable hunger I would have had a chance, but even then I’d only be delaying the inevitable. I am trapped in here and far too weak to fight my way out.

  I take another long pull of air before collapsing back on top of the server stack.

  Maybe they’ll assume I’m dead and toss my body out. Maybe they’ll take pi
ty on me and I’ll go into custody. At least I did something good before the end.

  I feel rather than hear the vents stop and the doors open. Vision blurred, I can barely muster the courage to turn my head and look towards my inevitable end.

  The lone guard seems to pay me no mind, wiggling his gloved hands frantically in the air, visored face and gas mask looking all around like a man attempting to find any trace of light in a darkened room. Strength slowly returning to my muscles, my first thought is to attempt to slip out while he’s distracted, then I notice his attire in no way resembles the riot gear of his companions. Neither do the massive headphones hanging over his virtual gear.

  Mathan? But why? How?

  My reflexes are shot, but I’m able to manage enough motion to slide myself off the edge. The landing is not as graceful as I’d hoped for and I collapse into a heap upon hitting the floor. Mathan continues his interpretive dance in the middle of the room for a moment while I lean against the stack I just fell from and use it to brace myself and slide to my feet.

  He was one of the original data thieves. Shit. I’ve been used, haven’t I?

  The double doors are still wide open and I can see several bodies of guards sprawled across the floor. Are they dead?

  When I look back to Mathan for answers, he seems to have questions of his own. The visor is tilted on his head just enough that I can see his eyes, wide and confused. It takes me a few dry swallows, but I manage to find my voice. “Surprised to see me here, bud? I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting you.”

  He takes a step towards me, pauses, then walks the rest of the way until he’s standing right in front of me. I can’t imagine that he wants to kill me, but if he did, now would be the opportune time.

  To my surprise, he reaches up, removes his headphones from his ears, then places them on mine.