“No shit. What is the password?” I asked.
“It’s thirty characters long.”
“What the fuck, Grey! You better write that down for me.”
“Already have. Here,” he said, handing me a folded up paper. “It’s a random pattern of characters. It would take the fastest computer in the world over a million years to decode it.”
“Damn, talk about secure.”
“Right?” he said, grinning.
“So, Grey, where are you going after today?”
He glanced to the ground momentarily in thought.
“I have a friend in Virginia Beach I might go see…but mainly, I’m going to wait until you contact me through Bitmessage and tell me where to head next.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and shook him.
“Grey, I have no words for you deciding to do this, to help me.”
He shook his head. “There’s no need to thank me. The way I see it is we have two options. We let them win, or, we put up the best damn fight we’ve got.”
“Damn right, my friend!”
Grey paused and looked me up and down. “Did you forget something?” he asked.
I returned his question with a confused stare. He walked back into the house, and a few moments later he returned with the black handgun he had shown me last night.
“Remember, Owen. You’re are going to have to scare the shit out of them. I know it’s not who you are, but remember—it’s necessary. I’ll be watching the security cameras. When you reach the vault, I will unlock it for you. If it happens not to work, there is a woman with red hair who is in one of the offices. She is the manager of the bank. Only she will have the code to access the vault.”
“Got it,” I said.
Grey patted my back roughly. He stepped back and pressed the button to open the garage.
“Only backroads to Richmond, all right?” he reminded me.
“Yes, that’s how I got here. Backroads.”
“Good,” he nodded. “Just get in, get the money, and get out of there. The rest is up to me.”
“How will I know you got the money?”
“You won’t,” Grey answered. “Not until we speak again. Use the flash drive, and whatever you do—do not lose that password.”
“Anything else, Dad?” I asked in a childish voice, mocking him.
“Shut up,” he pushed me. “Good luck out there.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it.”
I hit the ignition switch and quietly pulled out of Grey’s driveway. The air was crisp, and it was a clear blue sky. I inhaled the fresh air through my helmet and tried to enjoy my last half hour of peace. May God help me…
“Are we in the clear?” I asked.
“For now,” she answered.
“Keep watch for me, please.”
My assistant walked towards the glass door of the lab. I heard buttons being pressed and then a click. She had switched the settings to Experiment in Progress. Now, only staff could get in. We didn’t want any interruptions.
“Where did you say you got this sample again?” she questioned from across the room.
“Manhattan,” I responded while setting up the bone marrow sample on the slide.
“So how do you even know that cat was in the Danger Zone?”
“I don’t…but it’s worth a shot.”
“But is it worth the risk, Stefan?”
I looked over my shoulder to her. “Emily, no one is keeping you here. You aren’t being forced to help me with this experiment.”
She huffed.
“I am aware of that. Although, you know just as well as I do that the EPA and FEMA killed all the exposed stray animals for a reason.”
“And that, my dear friend, is exactly what we are trying to find out.”
“Just get it done quickly, okay?” she pressed.
“We both have a task at hand here. You do yours, and I’ll do mine.”
“Bite me,” she spat. “Well, at least if I go down you go down with me.”
“Indeed, I will. Do you think Professor Trantham would rat us out to the feds and betray our research? I highly doubt it. Now relax, please. You’re stressing me out.”
“Oh, you think you’re the stressed out one? Please…”
With the slide in the airlock of the electron microscope, I fired the beam. I waited for the image to process and began to examine the structure of the bone marrow. The nuclei looked hardly damaged. I had an additional sample from the same cat of more marrow, and I slid the transparency in the slot.
“What do you see?” Emily asked anxiously.
“Hold on,” I said.
This slide was the same. The marrow cells looked relatively undamaged. The doctorate program I was in was for Nuclear Engineering, but my two bachelor’s degrees were for Physics and Biology. I retained enough from my Biology days to know that this was not normal.
“Emily, last time I checked, Strontium-90 settles almost entirely in bones, correct?”
“Entirely in the bones, yes. Almost ninety-nine percent is deposited in the bones. It acts like calcium. Why? What did you find?”
With the cold metal desk in my hands, I felt my mind ignite. In my independent research since the dirty bombs outside of Wall Street almost two years ago, I have been playing the scientific lottery…and today, I hit the jackpot.
“Give me a scalpel, now,” I demanded.
Emily darted away from her position by the lab entrance and in moments returned to my side with a scalpel. “Stefan, is it not in the bones?”
“No,” I said, glancing at her. “It’s not.”
Astonishment filled her eyes.
“Your theory…that it might not be Strontium…”
“Yes. We need to look at the soft tissue—quickly.”
She nodded as I began slicing beneath the fur of the cat’s thigh. After a few moments, I removed the tiniest sliver of meat from the cat. I sliced that sliver in two and placed it beneath a new slide. If my theory was correct, when we stained the samples with a protein that isolated the microtubules, we would be able to view the cell division going on, or the lack thereof.
I looked at the new image that came on the screen.
What I saw was shocking. The cell nuclei were damaged, and as I focused the lens in on one section, I noticed what appeared to be the beginning of the process which causes cancer.
“Emily, slice off a piece from another limb—something different.”
I could hear her fiddling with the scalpel. I reached for another slide and pushed it in her direction. She put the new slide underneath the microscope and I saw the image change.
As I focused the lens, the cells were all the same. The nuclei damaged, the cells stuck in a dysfunctional mitosis, and pre-cancerous growths.
I walked around from the image display. Emily stared at me wide-eyed.
“Look,” I said quietly. I backed away from the table and let her see our discovery.
“It’s not Strontium,” Emily gasped. She stepped away from the image and faced me. “They lied. They lied about what it was.”
“Then what is it?” I asked.
“Perhaps Cesium-137. It appears to be evenly distributed throughout the soft tissues. There are other isotopes that act in the same manner, but this is definitive evidence that this cat’s radiation exposure was from something other than Strontium-90.”
Behind Emily, there was more congestion in the hallway outside the lab. The day was beginning.
“We have to clean this up, take a few more samples from its soft tissues, and dispose of it properly. Like you said, it’s not worth the risk of Professor finding out.”
She nodded and began taking more samples, preserving them in vials as she did so.
“I can’t believe your hunch was right…and to think, out of all the specimens you’ve brought in without radiation exposure and now this. How much did you spend on that cat?” she asked.
“I gave the homeless lady a hundred bucks. She put up a
good fight, but I told her if the cat really was in the Danger Zone on Black Monday it wouldn’t live much longer. She confirmed it had been ill, and I told her we might be able to heal it in the lab.”
“You liar,” she replied, shaking her head in disapproval.
I shrugged. “All in the name of science, Emily.”
“That was probably her only friend.”
“She had a dozen more surrounding her,” I said. “I have a heart too, you know.”
“Or so you claim,” she responded with a smile and continued packing up the equipment.
I heard someone at the door, a student, trying to get in with their palm on the scanner. It was being denied.
“Shit, hurry!” I urged her. “Keep our samples locked away and get rid of the cat. I have to make a phone call.”
In light of my discovery, I hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do. How could I report something that the government had tried so hard to destroy? My dad potentially could help, but he would want more evidence before he made a claim that bold. He would need something peer-reviewed, something more. I took out my phone and dialed the number for the EPA. I had someone, someone on the inside who had kept quiet and lied to me about the very evidence I now had. Perhaps she could help…
Emily was running circles around me, and I could tell she had cleaned quickly enough for our experiment not to be revealed to the student trying to get into the lab.
“EPA, how may I direct your call?” said the voice on the other line.
“Can you please connect me to the office of Ms. Walling?”
I had managed to make it into the city without any issues. The streets were filled with morning traffic, and I pulled up to the curb on the side of the bank. I saw a meter when I stepped off my bike. I wasn’t going to be here long anyway, so I ignored it and began my walk to the entrance.
My heart pounded out of my chest. I could feel the cold metal of the gun in my right hand inside my jacket pocket. What am I about to do right now?
I was having a hard time preparing mentally to rob the bank, but as I neared the shiny revolving door, I swallowed hard. This was necessary.
I walked into the bank and pulled the gun out of my pocket. I aimed it toward the ceiling and fired two shots.
Screams filled the bank and the employees froze.
“Everybody listen up!” I yelled and walked towards the counter. My heart was in my throat. “If you make one wrong move I will blow you the fuck away. Don’t try anything stupid! Stay down on the ground!” I commanded, waving my gun around at the people lying flat on the marble floor. I turned and pointed the gun at the employees who all had their hands up.
“I hate to put a damper in your day, I really do,” I shouted, my voice echoing throughout the lobby. “But I’m going to have to step behind the counter and get into the vault.”
As I stepped behind the counter a female employee was just a foot away. She was younger, short-haired, and she stared at me, shaking her head side to side with tears in her eyes.
“You can’t,” she whimpered. “It’s locked.”
I sighed with relief as I watched the piece of script that contained the Chinese bank’s routing numbers processing. The script executed seamlessly. I sipped my coffee, which wasn’t helping my racing heart. Having stayed up for over twenty-four hours was beginning to make me delirious.
Suddenly, it hit me. I just became a millionaire.
I grinned and laughed, shaking my head, and thought of how hard I had worked my entire life…and to think, I just pressed enter and waited thirty seconds.
I opened the minimized window of the security cameras at my bank to see Owen approaching the vault door. I almost spit my coffee out.
Shit. I opened our network mainframe that I was booted into remotely and began searching for the correct scripts that were associated with monitoring the vault’s lock. I knew from experience, the vault door sent out a ping every time it was opened or locked. What I needed to do was essentially send the lock a message wirelessly to unlock itself.
I found the right script. I reversed the code and sent it back to the lock.
Nothing.
My stomach sank. I saw Owen pulling at the vault’s lock.
I tried again. /Denied.
Angrily, I hit the enter button over and over.
/Denied
/Denied
/Denied
/Denied
“Fuck!” I shouted and slammed my fist against the desk.
Owen continued pulling on the vault’s lock. He wouldn’t stop trying.
Remember what I told you, buddy. Remember…
I began searching for another route. I had to search the event log, to find the last time someone opened the vault. The password would have been manually entered into the keypad, and the ping would be encrypted to protect the numbers themselves.
Whipping around, I waved my gun at the employees in front of me. I was beginning to sweat from the adrenaline. I glanced down at my watch. I had pressed the timer the moment I walked in. Three minutes had passed and my backpack was still empty—no money.
If it happens to not work, there is a woman with red hair who is in one of the offices. She is the manager of the bank. Only she will have the code to access the vault.
Grey’s words echoed in my mind. I kept my gun aimed at the employees and left the vault door. There were four offices in my view, and I peered into the first one. A brunette—she was on the phone. “Get off the phone,” I threatened, pointing the gun directly at her. She hung up and kept her hands in the air. I went to the office beside her, another brunette. The corner office, the fourth one, was the largest. My instincts were leading me there, and I followed. There she was, dressed in a black business suit and had red hair.
“Stand up,” I said.
“I can’t help you,” she retorted.
I shook my head and walked around to her desk and pressed the gun against her back.
“Are you sure about that?” I whispered into her ear.
She stood out of her desk and walked out of the office into the lobby.
“To the vault, now!” I yelled. I shot another bullet into the ceiling.
“The cops are on their way here,” she said calmly as we walked.
“Then hurry up!” I pushed her forward.
When we reached the vault, she didn’t do anything.
“I’m not going to open it.”
My time is running out…
I stood beside her and pressed the gun against her temple.
“I will fucking blow your brains out!” I screamed.
Tears filled her eyes and I saw her swallow. I would have never blown her brains out. I was not a killer…but everybody in this bank thought I was a terrorist who already had killed, and I was going to use that to my advantage.
She pressed six digits and the vault lock clicked open.
I turned the lock and pulled open the heavy, metal door. Inside was the most cash I had ever seen at one time. Shelves upon shelves of money. I immediately unzipped my backpack and started piling in bundles of hundred dollar bills. I kept my gun pointed at the bank manager, to keep her in the vault with me. If I was in here alone, all they would have to do is—
The vault door slammed shut, and I heard the mechanism lock.
My face turned blank. We were trapped.
The bank manager stared at me with a smile.
“Now you’re just a sitting duck,” she laughed.
Anger surged through my body. I knew there were other employees right outside the vault door.
“I will fucking kill her right here! Open this goddamn door! Do you all want her blood on your hands? Open the fucking door!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and pounded on the metal door with my free hand.
I started to panic. I searched around the vault for a way out, for anything…and in one of the top corners I saw it. It was a security camera. I stared at it, and in that moment I tried to plead with my facial expression, displaying how des
perate I was.
I know you’re watching Grey. Get me out of here, I know you can do it. Please find a way before it’s too late.
“I will fucking kill her! I swear to God I’ll do it!” Owen screamed in a rage.
“Please Owen, don’t blow her brains out…” I mumbled, watching the security camera video.
I looked at my script. It was cracking the encrypted digits from the last ping that the manager just punched in moments ago. My timer read twenty-nine seconds. Twenty-nine seconds until I could remotely enter the passcode to the vault.
Come on…come on…
On another screen, I was simultaneously opening up the emergency functions of the bank just in case the cops were closing in. It had been seven minutes. They couldn’t have been far off now.
Eleven seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight.
I zoomed out to see all twenty security cameras. Scanning quickly through them, the cameras that faced down the street showed Richmond Police approaching at high speed.
“Oh fuck! Fuck!” I yelled.
One—the digits appeared.
378416. I punched them in immediately. Switching over to the emergency functions, I locked all the automatic doors from the outside and turned on all the fire sprinklers. The dozens of people that were lying on the floors were now standing up and scrambling towards the exits.
“It’s all up to you now…” I said, covering my mouth from the intensity of what was unfolding at my work.
I turned the vault lock open. All the employees and patrons were running out of the bank. The emergency sprinklers were spraying water everywhere.
God damn Grey. You saved me, you fucking genius.
The sound of sirens echoed from outside. I saw officers scrambling up the bank steps.
“Oh shit!” I yelled and began sprinting towards the exit on the side where I parked my bike. I had to get to my bike before they did. The police ran into the automatic doors and tried to pry them open. They appeared to be locked.
The Gambit Page 8
