Brad watched him and smiled.
Probably on work experience judging by age and enthusiasm.
“Morning!” the boy said, as he shuffled the reams of paper onto his trolley.
“How ya goin, son?” Brad puffed out his chest a little to look confident in his electrician’s uniform. He needed to be a ‘man’s man’.
“Good. Third day, but I think they like me,” the boy said with a smile.
“Nice work, mate. Can you tell me where I can find the access stairs that run parallel with the lift?” Brad asked, trying to sound as normal as possible.
“Just down there. And there’s another power and control room on floor fifteen,” he grinned.
“You know your way round, they’d want you to hang around!” Brad said encouraging the boy.
“Really? I mean…I hope so, you know, if school doesn’t work out.” The boy smiled again and returned to his task, letting Brad march down to the access stairs. He knew exactly which floors he needed to inspect, 12, 13, 15 and 18. The rest had cameras.
He hoped Athan was having some luck as well.
***
Athan stood behind a guy in a grey suit getting coffee. He was waiting in the queue until the barista looked away. The plan was to jump into this guy in the grey suit and wait beside his exit in the metaphysical plane. He would wait long enough for the man to be well and truly inside the Lucas and Associates Building, then step out and use whatever bodies were in the building to transport himself. This would carry him to the room for files and paperwork. And if they were as secretive and evil as he thought, it might be in the offices of the managers, so that was where he needed to go.
Management.
The barista smiled to the man in grey and took his money before turning to the coffee machine.
Now was his chance.
He stepped into the man’s subconscious and found himself perched on a high branch or scaffold of one of the giant organic structures that thrust up into the glowing white mist. There was a warm breeze, which made Athan a little uneasy. It felt like he was sitting on the roof of a tall building, which wasn’t his favourite thing; Athan didn’t really like heights.
He sat in silence trying to see the ground beneath him through the creeping mist. Occasionally he could see other structures like the one he was on, but not quite as tall. Time passed slower here, so he had to estimate as best he could the time it would take for the man to get his coffee, cross the street, get into the building and hopefully go to an office upstairs away from the hustle and bustle and prying eyes of the foyer.
While he waited, he checked the shock glove and strapped it tightly to his right hand, he had concentrated hard to get it across the threshold. The glove was subtle, like the ones people wear on a sports injuries; it wouldn’t draw too much attention.
He smuggled objects this way occasionally, but usually just comic books or dim sims. This was for a very good cause; he could short out electronics with it and give guards a punch that would send them to hospital.
Time to infiltrate the enemy base, Athan thought as he slipped into the fluid-like exit that led back to the man in the grey suit and the physical world.
He stepped out onto the polished wood floor of a corridor and straightened his tie, the man in grey on a mission a few metres away now carrying a tray of four coffees, probably trying to sweeten up the secretary, or was he the secretary? Who knows.
Where the hell am I?
The lift chimed at the other end of the passage and Athan walked quickly to it. He needed to see what number it was stopping at.
He watched the numbers change in the lights at the top of the lift.
5, 6, 7 and 8.
He was on level 8.
The doors began to open, so he slid around a corner hoping the occupants wouldn’t walk his way.
A woman and a man in a black suit left the elevator, followed by a security guard dressed in a white shirt. All three sipped takeaway coffee and were discussing office dramas.
The security guard would have a key to a file room.
Athan chanced another look at the man’s back, and there were the keys, plastic cards with different numbers. He couldn’t risk taking them, he would have to use the shock glove to blow the locks.
The lowest manager office was level 10, but to find something as devious as kidnap and secret experimental technology, he thought he would go straight to the top.
He slipped into the elevator and pulled himself up through the serviceman’s door on the roof. He knelt in the dark on top of the elevator amongst all the cables and power cords, looking down through a little vent into the elevator body.
Now he just had to wait for one of the faces from Aadi’s list of Lucas and Associates managers.
***
Brad climbed flight after flight of stairs in the dark stairwell.
He was glad people these days were too lazy to use the stairs. It meant he had them all to himself.
As he reached level 12, he paused.
Level 12 had no operating cameras and no office staff recorded as working there.
He tried the handle; and it was unlocked.
Pushing the door a little ajar he peered inside to check the coast was clear.
There were a series of booths surrounded by foggy glass and in the centre was a dining table with salt and peppershakers and a bottle of tomato sauce.
A break area.
It seemed empty, so Brad took his chance to check it out.
He pushed the door open and slid inside and knelt beside the table. There was a roster on the wall over a coffee machine.
Security roster.
Brad looked back to the booths.
Security then, he thought.
They had camera-monitoring booths and they had their break area. He crept forward and peered over to the closest glass-topped booth to get a better look across the room. The whole area was fairly empty and there was a storeroom as the blueprints had indicated. No filing cabinets or top-secret stuff. There should have been someone here, he thought.
Brad was fairly sure he could leave this floor and try the next.
After slipping back into the stairwell Brad reached the door labeled level 13, and cracked the door just a little and peered in.
It was a corridor lined with rooms.
He was sure he’d found the archives.
He slid through the gap in the door and crept over to the first file room door.
“Excuse me!” There was a man in a white shirt and a green tie.
He looked disheveled like he’d been working all night.
“Excuse me? Where are you from? I’m pretty sure you need to check in with me for clearance,” he said.
“I’m here to check the power,” Brad said, staying in character.
“There are no meters on this floor, bucko. I better phone security and check your clearance.” The man said angrily.
“Wait! Where can I find all the files relating to top secret stuff, or activity from the last year?” Brad asked honestly.
The man’s eyes narrowed and flicked for a second to a door down the end, but then he chose to take on an air of authority. “You shouldn’t be up here! This is archive staff personnel only! I’m going to call security!”
“You told me enough. This door, yes?” Brad said, gesturing to the far door that had taken the man’s attention.
The man’s mouth was open and he looked about wildly. “I’m calling security!” he called as he turned to his office.
Brad raised his right hand and hit the trigger on the dart-firing device that was mounted there.
There was a barely audible hiss and the man collapsed to the floor unconscious. Brad was still for a moment, listening for any footsteps.
There was no one near.
He looked again at the unconscious man.
Handy, Brad thought as he admired and reloaded his dart gun.
He checked the handle of the door the man had glanced at, it was locked. On the door was
a sign saying management clearance only.
Brad rummaged through the electrician’s bag and found his lock picking kit, then gathered the implements required and began to undo the lock.
It was not easy, but it wasn’t hard for a man who had read the schematics for over two hundred different locks and remembered every word and diagram. With a click Brad was in.
Before him, though, was a dilemma.
He had a digital file decryptor and a 1080 pixel digital camera, and there were three boxes of paper files, a very new pair of desktop computers and a massive network drive.
Brad clawed through the bag again and found his portable hard drive. It only had two terra bytes of space, so he needed to be selective with the information he collected.
“I’m in archives. Potentially have all the info here. Need at least forty minutes to copy files,” he said quietly into his blue tooth earpiece.
“Elevator shaft,” Athan replied, “No target yet. Take your time.”
Brad took out his decryptor, fitted it to his hard drive and plugged the two into the first computer. Then he crept out into the corridor to bring the unconscious archivist back into the file room.
For a final touch he placed to two motion sensors in different positions in the corridor to alert him if anyone arrived. Only then did he open the first box of files and began taking all the ones he could.
When his bag looked a bit full he began taking photographs of the pages. It would be a long forty minutes, he thought.
***
On top of the elevator Athan had been watching everyone go up and down to different levels in the building.
None of them had seemed to match the pictures he had seen.
Until a man, in a dark blue suit, got into the lift.
He was a bald American. Athan listened as he chatted away on his mobile phone about some trivial issue he was having with moving furniture or something. Athan recognized him as one of the company’s field managers, someone who travelled to make sure jobs were done.
The man had a whole floor for himself and his own staff.
Floor 16.
Athan had to use the man’s body as a portal to get past level 15 as they all required key card access.
He silently opened the hatch on the top of the lift, took one last look down at the bald man still ranting on his phone and then dropped into his subconscious.
The exit was an exposed area like a desert, with nothing for miles except for the rippling gate on the ground beside him. Occasionally the ground would pull itself together to form wrinkled lines, but then they would loosen again and become smooth skin. It was a dreary place to wait while Athan’s host made it to his destination.
Athan had been lying on the smooth leathery ground for what felt like an hour.
It’s been long enough.
Time to see whether the bald businessman had accessed his floor yet.
He slid his body into the puddle that rippled on the ground beside him and emerged slowly from the back of the man in blue.
“…And if this moron tries to do it again, tell him I will personally see that he suffers for it!” He was yelling into a phone on his desk on loudspeaker.
The voice on the other end was very apologetic.
Athan found himself stuck behind the man’s chair, against the window, and he didn’t know where to go. Either way he was going to be seen by the man if he emerged.
He chose the dramatic road, and grabbed a pen from the desk and put it to the man’s neck.
“Hold still or I’ll kill you,” Athan hissed into the man’s ear.
The man squirmed a little and then elbowed Athan in the stomach so he fell against the window.
“Who the hell…” He pulled a draw open and pulled out a Browning 9mm pistol and spun to face Athan.
The bald man rose from his chair, his look of surprise transforming into a smirk.
He recognises me?
Athan dodged right and launched his right fist at the man’s torso, which sent the man over the table with a loud crack of energy.
The shock glove does pack some punch then, Athan thought as he scanned the floor for the gun.
The man still had it in his hand, and he fired two shots in Athan’s direction, one whizzed passed his ear the other stung like fire in his left arm.
“Takes a little more than a fancy zap to faze me, boy,” the bald man grinned as he clutched his torso with his left hand.
Who is this guy?
Athan faltered a little, but he was running on adrenaline. He wanted to dive at the man while he was still lying on his back, but the pistol was levelled at his face.
It felt like the old days.
Athan’s gloved fist clenched.
Like being in The League again.
“Mr Harper, Sleepwalker, you are more stupid than we could have hoped for!” The American laughed with bloody teeth.
The blow Athan had delivered had made the man bite his own tongue.
“Who are you?” Athan tried to steady his breathing.
“Do you not even know why you’re here?” The man smiled. “Fascinating.” The man smiled, and got up from the floor, gun still aimed and steady. “We were hoping to lure you in, but we had no idea you’d be this quick to come running. You’ve been a menace, ya see? To the guys high up. Undoing hard work, I’ve been told.”
“How do you know me?” Athan hissed.
This was not what he expected; the man was admitting the company’s guilt.
“I know all of you, Sleepwalker, the whole gang! You called it The League didn’t ya?” he teased. “Crime fightin’ freakshow. Lucky you and your friends kept your heads down or we’d have you frozen in tubs, marked as scientific curiousities.”
Athan seethed.
I can’t lose my cool. Not here, not now.
“I want everything you have on the secret exploits of this company for the last year.” The demand was futile. The bald man held the cards now. Athan knew he wasn’t bulletproof.
“You are stupid aren’t ya? I thought you were one of the super hero guys, but you are just a fool. You were the one we wanted, you are the only one we needed out of the way for the plan to fall into place. And you came to us, and you don’t even know why.” He laughed again.
Athan felt hurt.
He and Brad had pieced together so much recently and he thought they were almost ahead of the game, but now the enemy was laughing at him.
“It was only a matter of time I guess, but we thought that kidnapping your girlfriend might have sent you here faster.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned again, showing his blood stained teeth. “We thought you would have put two and two together and figured out that we own the DPHR, but I guess that took you too long.” He shrugged casually. “So we’ve been keeping a nice box warm for you in case you decided to drop in.”
“You have Furnace?” Athan demanded. Fresh heat flushed his face and his fingers twitched.
“No shit! And we have your other pal Deadfall as well, but we have plans for her. We will have plans for all of you mutant scum once we get the device up and running.” The man winked at Athan.
This man was fearless and cold.
“Where are they?” Athan snarled from between gritted teeth.
“Same place you’re goin’ boy. Mr Floyd!” The man called, and Athan turned to see a massive man in the doorway.
He wore a business suit and tie and he had a military crew cut, but it was the same Terrance Floyd that Athan knew.
“Cal?” Athan said, confusion clear in his voice.
“I don’t know you.” The big man said with a stern face.
It was Terrance Floyd, a Post-Human that Athan had known as Cal, and he was one of them, he used to be in The League.
He was their friend.
“Take Mr Harper here to the restraint room, I’ll call some of the boys in to come and collect him. We’ve been ready for this guy for a while now. We have some special restraints for him.” The bald man laughed again.
“Name’s Evan Boothe. Don’t forget the name boy, coz soon you’ll be just another one of my pets in a cage.”
“Cal!” Athan stumbled a few steps back, holding his wounded arm. “What are you doing working for this lunatic? They are killing people like us! They own the PHC! They are the enemy!” Terrance’s expression showed nothing but determination. “We were friends Cal!” Athan pleaded. He didn’t want to fight Terrance.
“You don’t make the rules. Come here!” Terrance launched forward and grabbed Athan by the jacket, but Athan responded with a right swing up under the big man’s chin. The shock glove did its thing again and Terrance reeled back, but then smiled, excited by the challenge.
Not many normal humans could give Terrance a punch that bothered him. Terrance leapt forward with another attack and Athan dodged it like a cat and caught the flying fist with his shock glove, delivering another crack of energy into the sturdy fighter. Athan was a little faster than normal people when he wanted to be, and in this case he had to be, a direct hit to the face from Terrance could smash most of the bones in his skull.
Terrance stumbled back clutching his hand with an evil grin.
What the hell is wrong with him…
“Let me go, Cal! This is bigger than us!” Athan pleaded, and clutched at his bleeding arm. He noticed he was shot in the upper arm through the flesh. It would heal, but not till he got away from Terrance and this Boothe guy.
“Just take him Floyd! Before he gets away!” the bald man yelled.
“Yes, Mister Boothe.”
Terrance feinted an attack and this time Athan had not anticipated the move. Terrance Floyd swung a backhand blow that threw Athan across the room and through the thin plaster wall that divided Boothe’s office from the next.
There was dust everywhere and a woman squealed at the sight of a bloodied man in a suit smashing through the wall.
Athan lay on his back amongst the shattered pieces of plasterboard. He gasped heavily through a couple of broken ribs, and coughed in the dust. Blood spattered from his mouth onto the front of his white shirt. “Crap.”
The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League Page 17
