Teen, Inc.

by Stefan Petrucha

  Nate insisted all I had to do was get them up to my room, and he had a “secret plan” (aka harebrained scheme) to handle the rest. I had no idea how we were going to get past Tony, let alone get Bungrin’s laptop.

  Nate and Jenny left to get some “secret” supplies, agreeing to come back around nine. Bungrin, I knew, would be working late, especially with the company in crisis mode. That gave me a few hours to pace and panic.

  Right on time, Nate and Jenny’s faces popped back up on my screen. I wasn’t going to bother to try to talk Crazy Nate out of it, but I wanted to give Jenny one last chance to back out.

  All she said was, “Can we get going? It’s freezing out here.”

  “Okay,” I whispered at the screen. “Are you near Receiving?”

  Nate swung his Webcam toward the loading docks, bathed in dim yellow security lights. It looked pretty cool, actually, sort of like a video game, a first-person shooter. A solitary security guard paced the rim of the concrete dock, smoking a cigarette. After a minute, he put it out, unlocked one of the doors, and went inside. The little green security car was nowhere in sight, so it was probably on the other side of the building.

  “Okay, get behind the big bin on the left,” I told them.

  I heard scraping and footsteps, then saw a closer view of the dock.

  “See the third door? About two years ago, they were bringing in a new desk for Mr. Hammond. It slid off the dolly and smashed that door. That’s why it’s bent at the bottom. They replaced the lock, but it doesn’t sit right. If you lift the handle and yank, it opens.”

  “Perfect,” Nate said.

  As they ran across the lot, I saw asphalt moving in a blur. The security lights got brighter as they climbed up to the doors. Then it got dark, but I heard the door jiggle and squeak open.

  They were in.

  With a dim view of the hallway, I guided them to the freight elevator that led to the hallway outside my office. They hit the button and shortly were on their way up.

  Now came the tricky part.

  Thinking of how “poised” Peggy was as she lied about me on TV, I put on my game face, went to my door, and opened it. Eyeballs was alone outside, sitting in that lounge chair, nodding off.

  “Tony,” I said.

  His eyes popped open. “What? What’s up?”

  “Look, I’m sorry, man, this is really stupid. But I thought you should know.”

  He sprang to his feet and walked over. “What? What’s stupid?”

  “I told them not to come up, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  His brow got all furrowed. “Huh? Who’s coming up?”

  I tried as hard as I could to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. “Some friends of mine. They just wanted to see me, so they’re sneaking in through the freight elevator.”

  He looked at me. “Right. Nice try. This place is locked up.”

  “No, really. I just don’t want them to get in trouble. If they get here, could you not turn them in? Maybe just walk them out again?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Jai-man! How could you even know they’re coming? You’re sealed off.”

  I gave him a famous shrug. “My pal Nate’s got this Webcam thing and he got past the firewall, and…”

  Eyeballs was about to explain again how that was not possible, when the freight elevator doors opened and Jenny and Nate came out, all grins.

  “Jaiden!” Nate roared and he started trucking down the hall toward me and Tony in this exaggeratedly happy march.

  “Holy crap,” Eyeballs said. He reached for his cell.

  I put my hand on the phone and tried to get all wide-eyed and innocent. “Tony, I told you! Please, don’t get them in trouble. Come on, man, just walk them back down.”

  By then, Nate was right there with us and Jenny was coming up fast.

  Tony pulled the phone from me. Nate started talking, fast.

  “Hey, look, look, look, Jaiden’s my best friend, can’t you let us visit him for five minutes? Five minutes?

  Tony shook his head. “No way. I’m calling security on your asses right now.”

  “Couldn’t you just walk them down yourself?”

  “And leave you up here alone? No way, 007.”

  Nate pretended to get all pissed. “You suck. I just wanted five freaking minutes.”

  “Yeah, and you’re going to get five freaking years in a youth camp,” Tony said.

  No sooner did he flip open his phone then Nate’s arm came out and up and he jammed something that looked like a black remote-control unit into Anthony’s neck.

  There was a quick buzzing sound, like an electric razor. All of a sudden, Tony’s eyeballs rolled back into his head and he fell to the ground like a big stuffed doll.

  I was in total shock.

  Nate jumped up and down, voice cracking as he talked. “It worked! It worked! My Taser worked! Ha! Oh yeah, oh yeah! I can’t believe I got this thing on eBay! Freak, yeah!” He looked at a little dial on it. “And I’ve got two charges left! Yes!”

  Jenny’s reaction was similar to mine, but with her own spin. She started screaming, “You killed him! You killed him!”

  Hearing this, Nate tried to hush her. “Shh! Shh! No, no! It’s okay! It’s okay! He’s fine! He’s fine! He’ll wake up in less than an hour!”

  She put her own hands over her mouth to stop herself screaming, but then she took to shaking and making this little whimpering noise.

  “Nate, are you totally out of your mind?” I said. “This is assault! Now what are we going to do?”

  “What do you think? Shut up and help me drag him inside!”

  He bent over and pulled at Tony. Tony, built like a linebacker, did not move.

  Nate looked at me and Jenny, furious. He picked up Tony’s cell and shoved it in our faces. “Help me drag him inside, or call Security yourself! One minute it’s we’ve got to do the right thing, then, when you actually do something, it’s all oh dear, did we hurt someone? Please. Give me a break.”

  This was Nate aka Chipmunk Cheeks, the guy with buckteeth. I guess you never really know someone until you’re breaking and entering with them.

  “So, Nate,” I said. “Ever kill a man?”

  “Not yet,” he said with a weird grin.

  The three of us dragged Tony into my room. Nate pulled some extension cords out of his backpack and we used those to tie his hands and legs. Then he pulled out some duct tape and wrapped a piece around Tony’s mouth.

  “Can he breathe though that?” Jenny asked, worried.

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?” I said.

  Nate rolled his eyes, put a strip of duct tape across his own mouth and breathed a few times through his nose. Then he pulled it off and winced.

  “See? He can breathe. Okay?”

  When Tony was secured, Nate looked around. “This your room? Like the desk.”

  “Can we get on with the secret plan, please?” I said.

  We rolled Tony to the side of my bed, so he’d be hard to see if anyone walked in. I covered him with a blanket and Jenny put a pillow under his head. Nate shook his head.

  Then we went back out into the hall.

  “This freight elevator doesn’t go to the top floor, so the fastest way up is the main elevator,” I said, and we got moving.

  Since it was after business hours, half the lights were out, so it was dark enough to hide and quiet enough to hear if anyone was coming.

  The first problem we faced was that once you’re in the main halls, they’re long, really long, like the length of the building, so if someone happened to be working late, or the cleaning crew was around, they’d see you a mile away. We tiptoed along, like a trio of idiot spy kids from one of those crappy movies, wondering how long our luck would hold out.

  It did for a while. We made it to the elevator, the one with the door I’d kicked in, but when I pressed the Up button, it didn’t light up like it was supposed to.

  “Maybe the bulb’s out,” Jenny sug
gested.

  “No,” I said. “When it’s this quiet, you’d hear it moving in the shaft.”

  I leaned my head against the door, looking at the dent I’d left in it, and listened. Nothing. That’s when I noticed something new; a magnetic stripe reader. You could tell it was a rush job. It didn’t even line up with the edge of the elevator buttons.

  “What the hell is that?” I said.

  “You don’t know?” Jenny asked.

  “I do,” Nate said. He had his laptop out and was trying to balance it against the wall as he typed. The bulky thing nearly fell out of his hands twice as he worked.

  “Had to give Caitlin the PDA, right?”

  “Shut up!” He typed some more. “This is easy. They haven’t even encrypted the WiFi, so I’m already in the system.” He stopped typing and started scanning the screen. “I’ve got a memo released today. They installed a new security system because of the protests. You need a card to use the elevators.”

  I exhaled. “If we use the stairs, we’ll set off the alarms. That’s it. We’re done.”

  “No! We knocked Tony out! There has to be a way up there!” Jenny protested.

  I didn’t want to disappoint her; I didn’t want to disappoint myself. Hell, I didn’t even want to disappoint Nate, but I couldn’t think of anything.

  Meanwhile, Crazy Nate was typing away like he was playing a video game. “Okay, I’ve got the maintenance maps. We’re here, and if we head down to the coffee area, we should be able to climb into the ventilation shaft and make our way upstairs.”

  “Give it up, James Bond! We’re going to go crawling in ventilation shafts now?”

  “Why not?” he said. He actually looked a little hurt. “They do it in movies.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound, so we followed “Lucy” down to the coffee area. It was a ten-by-ten-foot room with a sink, a fridge, a coffee machine, and yes, the terminal for a ventilation shaft. I climbed onto the counter and tried pulling off the grid, but my fingers couldn’t quite pry the thing off. Jenny handed me a butter knife, which did the trick nicely. The cover popped off and I gently laid it behind the sink.

  “We follow that shaft about a hundred feet, then it should head up,” Nate said.

  They took off their bulky coats and I shoved them into the hole ahead of us, in case they needed to exit fast. Jenny climbed up next to me and I helped her in. I went in second and Nate brought up the rear.

  There are three important differences between real-life ventilation shafts and the ones you see in the movies. First, real ones are smaller. We had a terrible time squirming through the damn thing. Second, they’re not one solid piece. They’re a series of pieces welded together, and whenever we snaked over a seam, we either cut our clothes or scraped our skin. There was lots of tearing and wincing as we made our way.

  Third, and most important, real-life ventilation shafts are not made to hold the weight of a human being. What they’re made to hold, and what they hold very well, is air. And air isn’t very heavy at all.

  Looking back, I’m surprised we made it as far as we did, which was about eight feet into the next room. Then there was this crunching sound, like a soda can being crushed.

  Nate said, “Wait…” like he’d had a new brilliant idea, but then the section of the shaft we were in tore loose and tumbled down.

  The fall itself, about eight feet, was really quick. I guess it was better we didn’t see it coming, but I wouldn’t say that that made it any less painful. Hitting the ground hurt like hell. The only thing that didn’t hurt was my wounded arm, which was now healing nicely.

  My head rang and my eyesight blurred, but I managed to push aside the broken pieces of shaft and make out that not only were we in a small office, but that someone was there, working late. Well, they weren’t working at all right then, because they were too busy staring at us. It took a second for me to focus and realize who it was.

  Nancy.

  Who else would be working late on a Friday?

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or upset.

  She spoke first. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Simple enough question. I wiped some dust from my mouth and said, “We were trying to break into Bungrin’s office, to see if we could steal any files off his laptop that proved the pollution was worse than he’s admitting, but there’s some kind of new security system on the elevators.”

  “Dude! You gave away the secret plan!” Nate said.

  I tried to respond calmly. “Dude, I think falling out of the ceiling did that.”

  Nancy opened her desk drawer and pulled a little silver bottle out. I think it was what they call a hip flask. She spun the cap off, took a slug, then turned back to us.

  “How’d you get past Anthony?”

  Nate grinned. “Taser!”

  She took another, longer slug, which I think drained the bottle. I, for one, was not going to listen to her lecture about substance abuse in the same way anymore. Anyway, she put the bottle down and looked at us again.

  “Jaiden, as of five o’clock this afternoon, you officially are no longer my responsibility. So…” She straightened her skirt, stood up, and started walking past us toward the door. “In my purse, there’s a security card that operates the elevators. I am going to go get some coffee. I’ll be about twenty minutes. When I report this strange mess in my office, I intend to pretend I didn’t see you. Do not tell anyone I said this, but if you do manage to use your Taser on Ted Bungrin, try to shove it in his crotch.”

  Then she left.

  Shaking the dust from my head I stood and started rifling her purse.

  “I think I should call my father,” Jenny said. “This has gotten way out of hand.”

  Nate and I both turned to her and said, “No!” loud enough to make her wince.

  I couldn’t believe how much stuff Nancy kept in there and how badly organized it was. It was like this person who was totally anal about everything else had this one little pocket of utter chaos in her life. After about a minute, I put my hands on a thick white plastic card with the NECorp logo on it.

  “Got it! Let’s go.”

  Jenny gave me a look.

  “What?” I asked.

  She stood there stiffly. “I’m not an idiot or a wuss for wanting to call my dad, you know. I got arrested during the protest for standing up for what I believe in.”

  I stared at her. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just with Nancy gone, Nate’s right. There’s nothing else they can do to me, nothing to lose. You don’t have to come, though.”

  “I want to. I’m just scared.”

  Nate stomped his feet. “Guys, either get a room or let’s get going!”

  As we walked back to the elevators, junk from the ceiling and ventilation shaft came off our shoes and we left a kind of white, crunchy trail. When someone from the cleaning staff appeared far down the hall, I thought we were done for, but we just leaned into the wall, and after a second he went into another office.

  I swiped the card through the reader and the light came on. In a few seconds, we were heading up. As we shared those awkward moments in the elevator with nothing else to do but sweat, Jenny turned to Nate and asked, “So what do we do when we find Bungrin?”

  He held up his Taser and smiled.

  “Could you not take that thing out unless you’re going to use it?” I asked. “Never mind. Quiet. We’re here.”

  The damaged doors wobbled as they opened. We crept out. Jenny and Nate got their first look at the waiting room with its gallery and flowing river.

  “It’s so disgusting,” Jenny said. “What a waste of space and energy!”

  But I could tell Nate thought it was cool.

  We walked toward the giant doors to Bungrin’s office. The waiting room was dim, making a thin line of light under the doors easily visible.

  “He’s here,” I whispered.

  “Great. How do we get him out and into the hands of…”—he raised the Taser again and narrowe
d his eyes—“The Eliminator?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Give me your coats.”

  They were thick winter coats, just big enough to cover the small space along the stream between the waiting room and the office. Shortly the water outside dried up, which meant the water inside would back up and pour all over Bungrin’s nice clean carpet. I figured that’d send him stumbling out in a fit.

  We ducked behind Cheryl Diego’s desk and waited. We didn’t have long. In seconds, the black doors swung inward and old Ted, shirtsleeves rolled up and an annoyed expression on his usually placid face, stormed out. He stood right in front of the desk, so close, we could see his shiny shoes, the perfect laces, the perfect socks.

  Nate looked at me. I nodded, lifted the finely pleated pants leg, and watched as Nate zapped the CEO of NECorp. Bungrin went down faster than Anthony. Probably because he weighed less.

  This time Jenny didn’t scream, she just smiled. What was not to like?

  We dragged his no-longer moving-and-shaking body back inside the office. The pneumatic doors closed silently behind us. Water pooled on the floor from the backed-up stream, but there was no time to deal with that now. The prize was open and waiting for us on the aircraft-carriersized desk—Bungrin’s laptop, already booted.

  Nate giggled as he ran up to it and started clicking keys like crazy.

  “It’s locked, it’s locked … wait, I’m in!”

  I went up to the water wall and stared at it. Jenny stepped up beside me and leaned into me a bit. “So this is your home, huh?”

  I shook my head. “It’s just a house. Not even a house. Well, you know what I mean.”

  She nodded and we watched the water until Nate squealed, “I don’t believe it!”

  We raced to look at the screen. Nate pointed at a bunch of memos and charts. “Those mercury filter-thingies were safe even if you tripled production, but Bungrin pushed them harder, and every time one fails it doesn’t just stop working, it dumps all the mercury it collected back in the water, twenty times the legal limit.”

  “Holy crap,” I said. “That’s it. That’s our smoking gun.”