by J. N. Chaney
He walked down the stoop and made a show of placing his hand on my shoulder. His hand was nearly a third bigger than my head was wide.
“Winston will smother you. Or cave your face in. It really depends on how he feels in the moment.”
I nodded to the large man and again at the woman. “I have no interest in betrayal.” I warmed to the thought of doing the job, working out information toward a goal. “I’m excited to get started on a problem without a simple solution. I . . . I’m bored of simple.”
The woman smiled again and offered a hand. “The name is Evelyn Rose. Come inside Winston’s place and we’ll get you up to speed.” Her eyes drifted over me. “What we do can be described in many ways, sweetie, but none of them are simple.”
11
Three days later, I paced in my room, unable to rest. The job would go down tonight, and I worked through each step in my head again. The arrival, the distribution of labor, the list of security devices, their potential placements, and how to deal with each.
The groundwork had been done. Evelyn supplied schematics for the building and a list of upgrades and changes. Winston had procured all the necessary tools to defeat the devices from Klemtite.
I marveled again at the simplicity of it. Access to high-end security technology meant needing to be able to test, disable, and repair that technology. What was infiltration if not the inverse of security?
Remi supplied the skills and grit to accomplish a job and had the training to improvise and extricate if needed. Extricate. That was his word. One of the few I had heard him say more than twice. He seemed to like the sound of it. It had a utility that I appreciated.
The target had not been given to me. Remi knew what he was looking for and I knew where it, whatever it was, would be. I understood that this job was a test run for me, but it worried me that I didn’t have all the information. I felt that anything I didn’t know could potentially ruin every other aspect of the plan.
I checked the time and saw I still had three hours until I had to be in position. So I started back from the top and walked through it all again.
I stood in the dark at the edge of a block of office buildings north of Quintell. The city wasn’t laid out with the academy as a hub, but it was hard not to orient everything from the one place I truly knew.
The business district spread north of the downtown area, where more recreation and commerce occurred. The offices were flanked by restaurants and different shops offering oasis and refuge from the stress of big business. The industrial areas were all west and the residential mostly to the east. Of course, the city was a megalopolis with the outskirts forming into the next city and so on. My world was the one that existed within walking distance of the academy. If future jobs were further out, I would need assistance traveling. I didn’t like the thought of being left out because of such a difficulty.
I watched as Winston pulled up to the building adjacent our target in his work transport. Officially, he was here for routine maintenance of the systems. A Union guard nodded to him and guided him into the building. The transport, full of useful tools, remained on the street, ready for our purposes.
I walked to the edge of the street and watched as Remi came from the opposite direction. We met at the side of the van opposite of the building that Winston had just entered.
Evelyn showed up last. She came out of a restaurant across the street and smoked in front of the van, still visible to anyone looking from the restaurant while we were out of sight in the shadows.
“Everything ready?” she said. Rhetorical. She didn’t wait for a response. “This is an easy job. Just in and out. You have an hour. Stick to the plan.”
Remi shoved a bag of tools into me and put on a harness of tools himself, his usual coat and hat left behind for this job. “I’ll get it done. No different than before.” He looked at me. “I do the job, you watch. Any trouble and you’re on your own.”
Evelyn stomped out her cigarette. “No worries, kid. We’re the best.” She returned to the restaurant. I could see her through the window seated with a couple of high-powered financial types. She was laughing and sharing drinks with the men.
Remi tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the target building. The operation was beginning, and I felt a flutter in my stomach. It wasn’t excitement or illness, but it felt like something between the two. I think I was nervous. I hadn’t ever gone into a situation where I didn’t know how it would end up. Even the meeting with Mr. Black had been going through the motions. I knew that nothing I did in that office would change anything. But this? Everything I did for the next hour mattered to the success of the job.
I loved the feeling.
We entered the building that Winston was in the process of servicing. While he walked the guard through the procedures that would need to take place and the time frame, we entered the stairwell. It took some time to travel through the thirty-four stories of the building using the stairs. Remi took them two by two without missing a step. His endurance was not surprising nor was his impatience with me as I lumbered from flight to flight with what I realized was the bulk of the gear.
We arrived at last on the roof.
Remi spoke to me as he readied the climbing gear from the bag. “I told you these jumpsuits were useless. We go up one building and nobody looks our way. We plan a distraction and take control of the feeds. There is nothing to see.”
His tone was gruff, but I got the feeling he enjoyed talking about the work. It wasn’t too different from any of the teachers I’d encountered that enjoyed their jobs.
He fired a grapple line across to the roof of the target building. A few knots later and he was ready to go. He attached the gear bag first and sent it along the way. It slid across the secured cable through the night sky. He checked my harness and attached the lead. “Just don’t squirm, and if you can’t get it off, wait for me to get over there.”
I nodded and held on to the lead. I took a step up and the next had me sailing through the air. It was an amazing moment. The feeling in my stomach grew, but I also couldn’t help but smile. Despite myself, I found that I had to bite my lip not to shout in excitement.
I arrived at the opposite rooftop and released the lead easily, then I grabbed the gear bag and detached that as well. By the time I had the bag off the line and in-hand, Remi had arrived.
He gripped my shoulder and nodded. “Good start. Now stay close and hand me what I need when I need it. We’re on a tight timer and I don’t need you to slow us down.”
Remi moved to a post at the edge of the roof. It wasn’t unlike a traffic bollard. “Jigkey.”
I opened the smallest of the gear bag’s three compartments and handed him the oblong rectangle. He pressed it to the side of the post and moved it down slowly until he heard a click. Then he moved it laterally across until there was a second click. He pressed a button on the housing and twisted the device.
“Got the looper ready?” Remi asked.
I didn’t. “One moment.” I reached into the bag’s second compartment and found the designated data pad and handed it to Remi.
He snatched it from me with a frown. “Anticipate what I need. You know what we’re going to encounter, so act like it.” He pulled on the jigkey to open a data port in the post, then attached the looper pad and activated it. It would record ten minutes of camera footage throughout our designated paths and then replay them until we disconnected it.
With the recorders dealt with, we approached the roof access door. Remi checked the latch and jamb, then nodded. “Circuit extender,” he said.
I handed him a cord with a self-adhesive patch on its side. He slid the patches into the door jamb with a small blade, placing one on the upper edge of the doorframe and the other at the junction of the latch.
“Clicker,” he muttered, snapping his fingers and holding his hand out impatiently.
I looked through the bag and was annoyed that I couldn’t find the device. It was essential for getting through the mag
locked doors by sending randomized impulses into the mechanism. It was basically a skeleton key made of magnetic fields. “It’s not in the bag. I know it was packed and accounted for in Winston’s inventory.”
I looked back to Remi to see he had already cracked the lock and slipped through the door. He smirked at me. “Coming?”
I ducked under the circuit extender, which fooled the system into thinking that the door was still closed. Once inside, I placed down a wooden block and Remi let the door rest open on it.
We started down the stairs. Our target was on the twenty-eighth floor, so the trek would be less exhausting than the one I had already endured. Even so, the gear bag felt twice as heavy now as when I first hefted it.
Remi chided me as we made our way down. “Yeah, I tricked you, I had the clicker in my tool belt. I also have the multitool and the cutters. No reason there shouldn’t be extras in the bag.”
“Winston prepped the bag,” I said.
He scoffed. “One, always double check anything Winston does. He’s solid and trustworthy, but he’s an idiot with details. Two, he’s also not here. Never let a man on the outside pack your gear. They aren’t the ones with their necks on the line when something goes missing, and they sure as hell aren’t around when you can’t find what you’re looking for.” He motioned to the bag. “Case in point.”
I was surprised by his insight. “Right. I apologize.”
He waved a hand at me. “S’okay, kid. You’ll learn.”
We arrived at the twenty-eighth floor. The process from the roof repeated. I handed Remi the circuit extender and he attached it. This time, I was able to observe as he worked the clicker at the lock. It wasn’t exciting to see, really. All the work occurred on the magnetic spectrum. The clicker displayed a wave form and Remi manipulated dials until it pinged green and the door released. It looked almost exactly like a lockpicking mini-game.
We slipped through the door the same as before with one exception. After placing the wooden block at the bottom of the frame I also placed one at the top of the door, wedging it into the top of the jamb.
Remi watched me with interest. “You read that somewhere?”
“Exterior door should only need one. Interior might be stumbled on by security or a late-night office worker. It will take them time to remove the top jamb block. That buys us time to get out without needing to open the door again.”
Remi sighed. “You forgot the part where they should be alarmed by the circuit extender. All you really did was waste time and supplies. Now let’s move.”
The churning in my stomach flipped up a notch. I was blowing it. I was trying to think so far ahead of the problems we could encounter, I didn’t think about more obvious issues.
We made our way along the wall to the south. The room was mostly filled with cubicles, which we passed without much interest until I saw a blinking light out of place. I called out to Remi, “Halt!”
He looked at me and then in the direction I pointed. “Scrambler.”
I fetched the palm-sized scrambler and put it in his hand, then he motioned me to step back.
He moved west to the cubicles and pressed himself against the side. Then he slipped into the one adjacent to the blinking and pulled himself up and over the thin material of the cubicle wall. Once he was in the correct cubicle, he pressed the scrambler to the data pad inside. The light went out.
He came back to me and handed me the scrambler. “Now, tell me what I did wrong there.”
I ran the last moments through my head. “You snuck up on a device that you intended to destroy. There was no reason to hide from it. It might not have even been recording, but if it was, you would have destroyed it.”
He smiled again. “No. My mistake was not just turning the damn thing off. If the pad was broadcasting live, the owner now knows something happened. Turning it off is just an interruption in feed. Don’t destroy when you can disable.”
We continued along the wall to a corner office. From there, we headed west. I saw a conference room and a break room. Nothing alerted me to any other danger. We entered the office at the far side with another set of circuit extenders and blocks.
That put us in the outer office and two rooms away from the target. Next, we needed to access the inner office. This required special permissions to open and couldn’t be fooled by a clicker. There was no maglock to fool. The inner office was secured by a pneumatic seal.
Remi sat at the desk in the outer office and turned on the data pad, careful to angle its cameras away from us. An easy-to-guess password later and we had the administrative assistant’s access. From there, we just opened the door. “Sometimes you gain access by going through the front door, right?”
I nodded. It really was easy to overthink some things.
We entered the inner office and Remi used the multitool on his belt to open a panel behind a biometric touch pad. One snipped wire and the door to the vault opened.
We entered the vault attached to the office. Small safes were built into three of the walls, and four display cases took up the far end of the room.
Remi pointed to the one on the north wall. “That’s our target.”
A gun was mounted prominently inside the case. It was old, practically ancient, in good condition but clearly from another time. It was gunmetal gray, a color I realized was named after objects just like this. It had a peculiar set of notches along the grip, and the barrel also had something etched on it. The significance of these markings was lost on me. Something else to learn later.
Remi worked the multitool and had the case dismantled in moments. The lock on it was still intact on the now removed frame.
He reached for the gun and I grabbed his wrist. “Look there.” I indicated a set of small metal nubs in a ring around the gun.
Remi nodded. “Good eye. Aftermarket additions. Smart woman knew to keep this off the record.” He observed the sensors for a moment. “Give me the pulser and shield your eyes. “
I handed him the device and turned to face the vault entrance. I heard him click eye protection into place and then a sharp snapping noise followed.
“Alright. We got it.”
I turned back to see small plumes of ozone leaking from the now destroyed sensors. I handed him the case we brought. He opened it and I saw for the first time that it was built to house a gun.
Remi handed me the case and the pulser, and I placed them in the gear bag. He looked at the removed display housing and then put it back on. “Better they wonder than learn their case is a liability.”
We headed out, working cautiously but faster than our trip in. The blocks of wood were removed and the circuit extenders retrieved, and we made it easily to the stairwell.
Remi took the gear bag from me. “You’ve done enough. I’ll lug the heavy stuff from here. Don’t need you passing out on me.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t certain he didn’t just want to have the loot with him.
“You did all right, kid. But why did you get involved with this?”
I breathed heavily as the adrenaline faded from me and the flights of stairs kept coming. “It seemed interesting. I wanted a challenge, and this offered me one.”
“That’s it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, but wondered if there should be more. Like any question about the future, it gave me pause. Still, the feeling in my stomach made me realize how right the choice was. “Yes. This was what I was after.”
We hit the roof and I disconnected the looper while Remi dealt with the access door.
Again, he mounted the gear bag on the wire and activated the winch to pull it across. I went next and he followed last.
He kept talking as we headed down the long flights of stairs back to the Klemtite transport.
“There’s a huge market for this kind of thing out there. Collectors want them and the Union tries to snatch them up.”
I considered this information. I knew that the Union had far-reaching concerns, but I hadn’t realized that w
eapon smuggling was necessary with their military resources. “So individuals and groups both want these things? Any idea who this one will be going to?”
He chuckled, the first genuine sound I had heard out of the tight-lipped and composed operative. “Eccentric collectors, Union scientists. Lots of deep pockets that find value in the rare. I just want the pay. Doesn’t matter the credo behind the buyer, just that their currency spends.”
Remi spoke in a poetic tone when he discussed money. It made him almost verbose.
“This item here will get us square with the client and make a payday. That’s money in our hands,” he said.
I thought about his reasoning. “What do you need the money for?”
He pushed open the door and loaded the bag into the vehicle. “Kid, in this business, you don’t ask for real names and you don’t ask what the money’s for. Trust me. And we’re done here. Go back to your room. I have a feeling you’ll hear from E again.”
12
I waited four long boring days before making my way back to Cascade Gardens. Remi told me that was standard protocol after doing a job to make certain that if anything went wrong, not everyone would get caught in the cleanup. I supposed it would be harder to deal with for someone that was expecting payment or thought the others would abscond with the goods and leave them out of the cut.
For me, it was simply dull. Classes offered little interest and no challenge like those involved in planning or executing a heist. Even the thoughts of contingency plans if something did go wrong, if questions were asked of me, stopped being a distraction after the second day. I had run through all the scenarios and was satisfied I had a handle on the dire to the merely inconvenient.
Today was exciting for more than the obvious. Outside of hearing the results of the heist, I was getting my first glimpse into Evelyn’s apartment. The previous job had been planned exclusively in Winston’s place across the way. Remi and Evelyn both had apartments in the east building. The separation was as much about autonomy as secrecy, with none of the thieves being completely comfortable with each other. I had been in my own room since boarding school began. While I had seen the same people every day for years of classes and campus living, I had always been able to return to my own space at the end of a day.
