by Lucas Flint
Unfortunately, now that I was actually inside the building, I did not know where to go next. TW had been unable to find blueprints of the Hive online, so he’d had to rely on pictures and videos of the Hive’s interior in order to build a semi-coherent map for me to follow. Even then, the map he provided me wasn’t very useful, because it did not tell me where to look for evidence. It didn’t help that I didn’t have much time to search. The more time I spent looking for the evidence I needed, the more likely I would be caught by a guard or security camera and the game would be over.
I needed to find the room where Bug Bite kept all of his equipment. If I could find that room, then I might be able to find the gun used by the assassin. Better yet, I might be able to find any documents relating to the assassin. I kind of doubted that the assassin sent Bug Bite a PayPal invoice for his services, but I might find something else that might incriminate Bug Bite.
Walking down the hallway, I checked behind each door briefly, but most of them were locked. I could have tried to break the locks, but that would just attract unnecessary attention from the guards, so whenever I found a locked door, I would just move on to the next door and hope that that door would be unlocked.
Sadly, it turned out that all of the doors, save for one at the very end of the hall, were locked. This last door, as it turned out, opened easily, allowing me to step inside and turn on the lights to see what was in here.
This looked promising. Nine filing cabinets stood in rows of three, each one tall enough to almost brush against the ceiling. The filing cabinets appeared to be alphabetized, which was all the confirmation I needed that Bug Bite was an even bigger dork than I thought. Still, I had to admit that that would make it easier to look through them for the information I needed.
Moving over to the filing cabinets, I was unsure which ones to check first. I needed to find documents relating to the assassin, so ‘A’ seemed like a logical place to start, but somehow I doubted that it would be that simple. Perhaps ‘B’ for Bug Bite would be a better place to—
“Someone is coming down the hall toward your room, Jack,” said TW in my head suddenly. “Find some place to hide. Quickly, before she comes inside.”
Startled, I looked around for a place to hide, but the room wasn’t very large and didn’t offer much space in which to hide. So I ran around to the back of the last row of filing cabinets, where I crouched low with my cape drawn around myself to keep myself as small as possible. It was the best hiding spot I could find in here, though I was well aware of how inadequate it was, because all it would take was for the person who was about to enter the room to walk over here and she’d see me as clear as day.
Then I heard the door open, followed by the clicking of high heels across the floor, and then a low female voice said, “That’s strange. Who left the lights on? Must have been Derek. How many times do I need to tell him to turn off the lights when he’s done in a room?”
The clicking and clacking of high heels came closer and closer, making me think that the woman was going to come to the back of the room after all. I readied myself to take her out, but then I heard her footsteps stop and then what sounded like the woman opening one of the filing cabinets. Peering around the corner of the filing cabinets, I saw a woman standing with her back to me, looking through the filing cabinet labeled ‘P.’ She seemed completely unaware of her surroundings, perhaps because she was so deeply focused on the file she was looking for that she didn’t notice anything else.
I couldn’t believe my luck. TW and I had gone through all the trouble of making sure that I got inside without being seen, knowing I wouldn’t have all the time in the world in which to look for the evidence I needed, only for me to now be delayed by this woman who seemed to think her coworker was a kid she needed to scold. I hoped that she would find the file she was looking for quickly and would leave the room, but something told me that she was going to take her sweet time looking for what she wanted.
But maybe I was looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps I could turn this time-wasting situation around into a time-saving situation. This woman obviously worked here as an employee of some sort. She probably didn’t know if Bug Bite had anything to do with the assassin, but she might be able to point me in the right direction to search for the evidence I need. She didn’t seem very tough, so I could probably make her talk if I wanted.
Slowly rising from a crouch, I tiptoed toward the woman, who was still noisily combing through the filing cabinet, muttering under her breath about how Bug Bite needed to seriously rethink his filing system for something that made more sense. She didn’t notice me coming up behind her until I grabbed her left arm and put my hand over her mouth before she could scream.
“Don’t,” I said, before the woman could say anything. “Scream, even once, and I’ll make sure you get a good night’s sleep tonight.”
The woman didn’t even struggle to break free. She became putty in my hands, which surprised me because I figured she would at least fight against me. Maybe she was weaker than I thought.
“Now,” I said, leaning in close to her ear to make sure she could hear me, “I’m looking for some information about a particular matter I’m investigating, which I think Bug Bite has a good chance of being connected to. If you help me, I won’t hurt you, but if you try to get away from me, I will. Got that?”
The woman nodded. I wished I could see her face, because that would make it easier to tell what she was thinking, but I would just have to rely on her body language for now. Right now, her body language made it clear that she was completely terrified of me and was willing to do almost anything I asked her to do. I felt kind of bad for doing this to her, but I told myself it was for the greater good, and besides, it wasn’t like I was going to kill her or anything.
“All right,” I said. “If I was looking for important files that Bug Bite might keep somewhere—say, files regarding the private details of his business—where do you think he would keep them?”
I removed a few of my fingers from her mouth, just enough to let her talk, and she immediately said, in a hasty voice, “Bug Bite’s laptop. He keeps all of his business correspondence and most important files on there.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Where is Bug Bite’s laptop?”
“W-With him,” said the woman, “so probably in his apartment in town.”
I scowled. “I didn’t break in here just to break out again and have to break into somewhere else.”
“B-But he always keeps backups of all his most important files and correspondence in his lab,” said the woman quickly. “He has a USB drive specifically designed for backing up his files.”
“He doesn’t keep them on the cloud?”
“Bug Bite doesn’t trust the cloud. Thinks it’s unsafe.”
I nodded. “Right. So, where is the lab? How can I get to it from here?”
“Keep going down the hall,” said the woman, who sounded very close to tears now. “When you r-reach a fork, turn right. This will t-take you down another hall and then you’ll find a set of d-double doors labeled ‘LAB.’”
“And where, exactly, inside the lab is the USB drive?” I said. “Surely Bug Bite doesn’t just leave such an important object lying around on a desk in plain view.”
“It’s in a safe,” said the woman. “Underneath the main desk. You can’t miss it. I don’t h-have the combination, so don’t ask me for it.”
I sensed that the woman was telling the truth about not having the combination for the safe. That was inconvenient, but I would figure a way around that when I got there.
“All right,” I said. “Well, thanks for your help. I know you’re really scared now, but trust me, I’m not the bad guy here, though your boss might be.”
“W-What are you talking about?” said the woman. “Bug Bite is a h-hero.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said. “Anyway, thanks for your help. Take a nap. You deserved it.”
I slammed my fist against her head. The woman slum
ped in my arms, but I gradually let her down on the floor, where she lay in a half-fetal position. I hated knocking out an innocent civilian like that, but I couldn’t risk leaving her conscious because she might tell the guards about me, which would ruin my plans for sure.
Anyway, I put such thoughts out of my mind for now and made my way to the door, intending to get to the lab as quickly as possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Luckily for me, it turned out that the woman’s directions were accurate. After a couple more minutes of walking along the hallway, turning at each point the lady had told me to, I found myself standing in front of a set of double doors with the word ‘LAB’ painted across them in red paint. The lights on the other side were off, which told me that no one was currently using the lab at the moment. I looked both ways, just to make sure no one was around to see me, and then carefully pushed open the doors and entered.
The lab was pitch-black. That would have been a problem normally, but luckily my goggles’ night vision feature kicked in just then, allowing me to see my surroundings. I almost immediately wished I didn’t.
Bug Bite’s laboratory was huge, much bigger than I expected. Rows upon rows of tall test tubes stood arrayed before me, each one carrying a different kind of insect or bug. And they weren’t just normal bugs, either, but over-sized ones, like they had been shot with a growth ray or something. One of the test tubes, for example, contained a wasp that was about the same size as me, with a stinger that looked as sharp as a knife. Another test tube had a strange two-headed bee, while yet another test tube had an ant. Each insect appeared to be in suspended animation, though that hardly made me feel very comfortable.
“Holy crud,” I said. “Bug Bite really is a mad scientist. And he’s supposed to be the city’s superhero?”
“Perhaps he just really likes bugs,” said TW. “In any case, I disabled the lab’s security cameras, though oddly they were already off when I did that. It appears that Bug Bite prefers his privacy. Regardless, I still don’t suggest spending more time here than necessary. Just get the flash drive and go.”
“Hey, no need to tell me that twice,” I said. I shuddered at the sight of the giant insects. “I’m not going to linger, that’s for sure.”
I walked among the test tubes, glancing this way and that for the desk which the woman had told me about. Unfortunately, all I saw were large test tubes in every direction, each one filled with another scary-looking overgrown insect. I felt like the giant insects were watching my every move, even though they weren’t even conscious at the moment. Once, I thought I saw a giant preying mantis’ eyes move, but when I looked at it again, they were still.
It didn’t help that the lab was oddly cold. It wasn’t quite freezing, but it was a lot colder than it was outside or in the rest of the building. I wished I’d turned on the lights before I went in any deeper, but if I’d done that, the guards likely would have noticed. It would have made me feel safer, though, and I was seriously contemplating doing that when I looked up at the ceiling and noticed a platform hovering over the test tubes.
The platform was suspended from the ceiling by several large beams, but it was also supported by two stairways on either side. Because I stood directly underneath the platform, I could not see what was on top of it, but I could fly up there and find out. Perhaps the USB drive and the safe in which it was kept were both up there.
I flew up and around the platform, coming to a landing right in the middle of it. As I suspected, this was the part of the lab where most of the work was done. Over to one side was a worktable with small test tubes, a microscope, and various notes and papers that appeared to relate to the experiments that Bug Bite was doing. I did not see the safe underneath that desk, but I did spot another desk over on the other side of the platform. This one had a desk, upon which a lone wireless keyboard sat. Walking around the desk, I found a large safe sitting directly under the desk. It looked pretty old-fashioned, but I suspected that was more due to its aesthetics than anything.
“Hey, TW,” I said, “I found the safe, but I don’t know the combination. Can you crack it?”
“Negative,” said TW. “It’s not connected to any of the Hive’s systems. As far as I can tell, it’s just an ordinary safe with a normal mechanical lock.”
“So Bug Bite is a mad scientist with all kinds of funky equipment to do all kinds of bizarre scientific experiments, but he just uses an old-fashioned safe to keep his information a secret?”
“It’s more logical than it appears. Smart technology isn’t necessarily always, well, smart. A safe connected to the Internet can always be hacked, no matter how good its security systems may be. A safe that cannot connect to the Internet at all, on the other hand, can’t be cracked nearly as easily. You’d either have to know the combination or be a master thief to pull it off.”
“Or you could just have super strength like me,” I said. I balled my hand into a fist. “One good blow should knock the door off its hinges and let me get whatever is inside.”
“Punching the door off might be too noisy,” said Bug Bite. “I suggest breaking the lock. It will be a lot less noisy that way.”
I frowned, but nodded and said, “Good point. Not that it makes much of a difference either way, of course.”
I knelt in front of the safe and grabbed the lock. I turned the dial a couple of times to test its strength before ripping it straight off the door and carefully resting it on the floor. Then I opened the door and peered inside at the safe’s contents.
The safe didn’t have much in it. There was a couple thousand dollars in cash, a few documents with the words ‘TOP SECRET’ stamped over them, and a couple of glass vials with yellow and purple liquids that I could not identify. And there, sitting in the very middle of the safe, was none other than the flash drive I sought.
Grinning wildly, I reached into the safe and picked up the flash drive. I turned it over and saw a couple of words written in sharpie on its surface: ‘BACKUP.’
“TW, I found it,” I whispered excitedly, though I wasn’t sure why I was whispering when I was the only person in the lab. “The flash drive. I’m holding it even as I speak.”
“Good job, Jack!” said TW. “Time for us to leave, I think. I suggest heading back the way you came. It’s the safest path.”
“Right,” I said as I slipped the flash drive into the pouch on my suit. “Time to vamoose.”
I closed the safe and stood up, but as soon as I did, the lights turned on and a fist came flying at my face and smashed into my nose. The blow sent me staggering backwards into the railing along the platform, which I held onto as tightly as I could. My eyes watered in pain as my nose burned, forcing me to cover it with one of my hands in an attempt to keep the swelling down.
“Dang it,” I said, not even bothering to hide the pain in my voice. “Where did that come from?”
I heard movement on the other side of the desk and raised my head to see the last person I wanted to see right now: Bug Bite himself. And he did not look happy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bug Bite looked pretty much the same as he did back in the scene of the crime, except he was visibly angrier than before. His mask still hid his facial expressions, of course, but his body language told me everything I needed to know about how he felt and then some. His hands were balled tightly into fists and he stood as rigid as a beam, facing me without even one trace of fear in his form.
“Bug Bite?” I said, wincing at the pain that flared in my nose when I said his name. “What are you doing here? I thought today was your day off. Shouldn’t you be in your apartment in Rumsfeld?”
“That was a lie,” said Bug Bite. “I knew you would attempt to break into the Hive at some point, so I spread the rumor that I would be away tonight. That way, you would get cocky and be easier to take by surprise, though I will admit that I wasn’t entirely sure you would fall for the bait. I thought you might be smarter than you look, but luckily for me, you’re actually dumber than you
look.”
I scowled. “Why did you think I would try to break into the Hive? Did you think I would try to steal something from you?”
“Truthfully, I thought you might try to destroy my base as revenge for our little scuffle earlier this week,” said Bug Bite. “Or perhaps you would try to destroy my costume and equipment so you would be the only superhero in Rumsfeld. I’ll admit I didn’t think you would try to steal the flash drive with all of my most important files and documents on it.”
“Well, you should feel really stupid now,” I said. I patted my pouch. “’Cause I’ve got your flash drive and every last file on it. Once I get out of here, all your secrets will be revealed to the world and everyone in Rumsfeld will know what you actually are.”
Bug Bite tilted his head to the side. “Just because I didn’t think you were likely to steal the flash drive doesn’t mean I thought it was impossible. The flash drive you stole from my safe is a blank.”
“What?” I said. “A blank?”
“Correct,” said Bug Bite. He gestured at the safe. “Do you really think I would be so stupid as to hide the most important flash drive I own in a safe anyone could break into? No, the actual flash drive is in a safe deposit box at Rumsfeld First National Bank, where it is far safer than it would be here. The flash drive you just stole is a decoy meant to frustrate would-be thieves.”
“He’s right,” said TW in my head. “I just scanned the flash drive’s contents. It’s completely empty. It doesn’t even have one bit of information in it.”
“Crap,” I said.
“Don’t feel so bad,” said Bug Bite. “I’m not quite sure how you managed to sneak past all of my security systems, but credit where credit’s due. Even many master thieves would have a hard time sneaking past all of that.” Then Bug Bite shook his head. “Of course, in the end, it doesn’t matter, because you are going to jail tonight no matter what.”
