“Screw what my dad says. He’s so concerned with what we might lose, he isn’t looking at what we might gain. We’ll go and do some recon, like you said. Figure out what makes it work, if there are weaknesses, vulnerabilities. Hell, for all we know, we may even find some vehicles we can steal.”
I swallowed a ball of raw, unidentifiable emotion. I wasn’t sure if the emotion had come from Jamie’s sudden defiance of his father’s decree, or how close we were, or both, but my chest was starting to feel airy. I stared at him, wondering if he was joking, or worse, testing me, but all I could see in his jade green eyes was sincerity.
Sincerity, and me.
“You’re being serious,” I said.
“Of course I’m being serious. I don’t want to sit here anymore than you do, not if the Faction is starting to take active steps in finding out where we are hiding. We’re safe for now, but that won’t last. This base isn’t as well protected as the last one was.”
“You know…”
“What?”
A smile made its way across my face, brightening it. “Is it wrong that I kinda like this?”
“Like what?”
“You, sticking it to your dad… doing what you feel you’ve gotta do. It’s kinda hot.”
Jamie stared at me, and his eyes seemed to catch the light above us for an instant and shine like reflective pieces of metal. It was as if something in them had changed, something in him. I could almost see him looking at me with different eyes, almost… hungry eyes. My breath started to quicken, a pace to match the pulsing of my heart. Jamie’s chest also began taking short ragged breaths, as inch by inch I felt him drawing closer and closer to me.
My head went to one side, his to the other, all the while drawing closer, and closer, until…
“Ahem.”
The sudden voice made us both jump out of our skin and return to something like a normal stance, with Jamie standing a good foot or two away from me, but more importantly, our faces nowhere near each other’s. It was Spider, and he had a look of awkward surprise on his face, but I could tell by his body language that he hadn’t meant to come between what may have been about to happen.
What was about to happen.
“Hey, Spider,” I said, smiling, heart pounding. “What’s up?”
“Uh, nothing,” Spider said. “I just wanted to check in and find out what the big guy had said about the mission today.”
“Oh,” I looked over at Jamie, then back at Spider, “he didn’t take it well. I mean, we stole a lot of information, but he’s still not convinced about trying to take the shield down. He wants to try and go through the checkpoint.”
Spider shook his head and blew air out of his mouth. “Damn. He does realize that’s impossible, right? Every single vehicle that goes through that thing is thoroughly checked and vetted. We’d never make it.”
“I know… which is why we’re going to go ahead with plan B.”
“Plan B?”
Jamie turned concerned eyes up at me. I nodded at him, then looked at Spider. “We’re going to go to the generator facility ourselves… a small team, under cover of darkness, maybe we’ll use our disguises.”
“No way,” Spider said, coming closer. “A covert op?”
“Super covert. No one here can find out. Are you in?”
“Hell yeah I’m in. You’ll need the Ace.”
“I don’t know if we can use the Ace. We may need to head out on foot, or on wheels… preferably wheels. The city is miles away.”
“Okay, let me worry about transport. I’ll find a way to get you both where you need to go.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Spider,” I said. “Let me know when you have something for us.”
Spider nodded and began to jog down the hall, leaving Jamie and I alone again. I looked at him, and he looked down at the floor. “Alright,” he said. “So, I’ll, uh… should I find Abel?”
“Oh, uh, yeah,” I said. “Let’s get Abel into this. Maybe he’ll be able to help us figure this out.”
“Right, okay.” Jamie awkwardly shuffled down the hall. “I’ll get back to you soon,” he said, clasping his hands together.
I gave him a thumbs-up and smiled. When he turned around, I checked my own thumb, and cringed. “A thumb’s-up?” I asked, “Why’d I give him a thumbs-up?”
Shaking my head, I turned tail and headed back to my quarters where I found Aisha sitting with Ava coiled around her on the bed.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“You used to work at a strip club…”
“Yeah... why?”
“Were there a lot of… hot… girls there?”
Aisha regarded me suspiciously. “Yes?”
“I’m going to say this once, and only once. Ever. Period.”
“The suspense! Tell me already.”
I sighed. “I need you to make me look hot.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Spider, can you hear me? I asked, speaking in my mind.
I’m here, Max. How is everything on your end?
We just parked the car, Jamie’s gone into the bar ahead of me, and I’m about to go in. You’re sure our mark is in there?
Abel was pretty thorough; our guy will be in there.
Okay, I’ll check back in if I run into trouble. You two keep your noses clean.
I breathed deep and checked myself out in the rearview mirror of the car Jamie and I had driven here. It wasn’t exactly the best of rides, or the smoothest, but Spider had seen the car parked in the maintenance bay, and after whispering sweet words into its ear, he had gotten the old thing running again.
I pouted at myself in the mirror, puckering my full, red lips and fluffing up my wavy dark hair. This was still a magical disguise; in fact, I was wearing Isabella. But with a bit of help from Aisha, I had been able to make the Isabella disguise look… hot. At least I thought so, anyway. I was wearing more make up than I was used to. Aisha had spent a good hour priming and blending so that my skin looked flawless, and she had made it so my eyes were smoked out without looking like I had a black eye. She was able to work a miracle considering the limited supplies she had borrowed from other members of the Order.
“Alright,” I said at my reflection. “Showtime.”
I stepped out of the old car and into the cold, wet night. The rain had let up after having fallen hard all day, making the roads and sidewalk slick. But it had cleaned away all the dirt and muck, replacing it with that fresh smell of rain. Lights seemed to glow more brightly, reflections looked more vibrant, and the night air felt charged; tonight was the night for this. I could feel it.
Across the street from me was the hotel restaurant where I’d find my mark. It was called the Ivy, and according to Abel’s research, it was not only a clean, respectable bar where the cocktails were good, the food was better, and there was usually some kind of live band playing, but it was also the regular haunt of one Mister Stanley Miller. On any normal day, I wouldn’t have given this guy any mind. But today wasn’t a normal day, and Stanley Miller wasn’t a normal guy.
He was one of the people known to work at the facility we had been thinking of breaking into.
It had taken Abel a couple of hours to find him, but contained in the data slates we had been able to retrieve from Faction HQ were, not only directions to the facility itself, but an entire crew manifest complete with shift patterns and personal information. From there all it had taken was a little connecting of the dots for Abel to find one man who not only worked at the place, but was fairly unattached and could be found at a bar like the Ivy most nights after a long shift.
Knowing Jamie had gone inside before me and was ready to assist just in case things went sour, I headed into the bar by way of the front entrance. Music touched my ears as soon as I pushed through the heavy door, followed by the broken voices of several conversations taking place at the same time. The dimly lit Ivy wasn’t packed, but there were plenty of patrons, many of them enjoying some food and a l
ittle conversation, others sitting at the bar with a beer in their hands and their eyes glued to the massive TV on the other side of the room.
I walked deeper into the building and headed straight for the bar. Immediately after sitting next to a man and ordering myself a whiskey sour, I received my first I want to have sex with this girl glance from a man sitting to my left. I turned my eyes to the guy, making sure to keep eye contact, and then pulled out my phone and pretended to be busy while scanning the room with my periphery.
My drink arrived seconds before I spotted my mark sitting on the other side of the bar. After taking a sip of my drink, I picked it up and waltzed over to where Stanley was sitting. He turned to put his drink down, and I realized he wasn’t entirely unattractive. He had short, black—or maybe dark brown—hair, he was cleanly shaven, and he was wearing a buttoned down white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. On one of his forearms, I spotted a tattoo of what looked like a large bat soaring across a dark night with the moon behind it.
Putting on my best flirty smile, I walked closer to him, and arched around his shoulder. “Hey,” I said. “Are you… Stanley?”
He turned to look at me, and then did a double take. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Do I know you?”
“I’m Bella.”
“Bella?” He seemed to try and place me.
“Yeah, remember, from the office party?”
“Office party… the one at the Space Needle?”
“Right! We got drunk, and I kept trying to throw my shoe off the side. You insisted the windows were sealed shut, so I dared you to prove it by throwing your own shoes out… remember?”
Magic.
Awareness brightened his cloudy expression, and he seemed to remember—at least, he thought he did. The magic I had used was subtle. It wasn’t a command; I couldn’t do that. I had simply suggested he actually did remember what I was saying, even if he didn’t, a feat made possible by having already set up the narrative that we had been drunk that night.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh yeah, I think I remember! Bella, wow, hi, I haven’t seen you in months.”
“Mind if I sit?”
“No, not at all, here.”
I sat next to him and set my drink down on the bar, flicking my long, dark hair over my shoulder and putting on a bright smile. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you like this. I just saw a familiar face and thought I’d come and sit down. I’m waiting on a girlfriend.”
“That’s totally alright,” he said. “So, how have you been?”
“Oh, you know, the job is pretty boring. I work over at HQ, in admin. I think I told you that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I think I remember.”
“And, I’m sorry, where is it you work?”
I was fishing.
“I work over at power and light,” he said. “Probably not as exciting as your job.”
“Power and light?” I asked. “Wow, that… yeah, that definitely sounds even more boring than what I do.”
Stanley broke into a genuine laugh. He eyed me up and down, lingering on my cleavage, and then took a swig of his beer. “It’s not as boring as you think.”
“Really? What do you do?”
He stared at me again, and I could almost see conflict in his eyes. “Ah, don’t worry about it.” He took another swig.
“Oh no, come on, don’t do that.” I leaned forward and lightly touched his hand. “Now you have to tell me!”
Magic.
He looked at my hand, then up at my eyes, and grinned. “Look,” he said, “I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you that I work with something really, really cool.”
I had a feeling he wasn’t going to give what I wanted up without a fight, so I decided to pull back and switch the conversation up a little bit. I talked to him about his life, his hobbies. He was into football, he liked the same kinds of music I liked, and he was really easy to get to know. When he asked questions about Isabella, I was quick to dodge them and turn them into questions about him. After a couple more drinks, the question of where he worked and that really cool thing he worked with came up again.
I leaned even closer—so close we were almost like co-conspirators discussing a secret plan. “Tell me?” I asked. “What is it?”
“I… I can’t tell you… not here.”
“Okay, so, where?”
Stanley glanced around the bar. “I can take you there.”
I sucked in a deep breath of air and let my voice rise an octave, feigning excitement. “Really?” I asked. “When?”
He plucked his work ID from out of his back pocket. “I can go whenever I want,” he said, “but you’re meeting a friend, right?”
“Oh, shit, yes… damn.”
“It’s alright, don’t worry about it.” He withdrew his arm.
“No,” I said, chasing it. “I want to go. If I can get out of this, could you take me tonight?”
He grinned. “I could be persuaded.”
“Okay.” I stood. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll be right back. I’m just going to make a phone call.”
I let my hand slide up his arm and off his shoulder as I made my way past him and toward the men’s bathroom where I knew Jamie would be waiting. He had been watching, keeping track of my movements, and he knew, as soon as he saw me heading for the bathroom, to beat me to it and get inside. He opened the door for me just as I arrived, and I hurried through it as quietly as I could.
As far as bar bathrooms went, this one was of above average standard and a lot cleaner than I had thought it would be. Not a single hint of urine in the air.
“So?” Jamie asked. He was wearing Sunni’s disguise, and as much as it was a fine disguise, and Sunni was a perfectly good-looking guy, I missed seeing Jamie’s real face.
“Okay,” I said. “So, I’m in. He’s going to take me to the place where he works tonight.”
“Holy shit, that was fast.”
“What can I say? I’m good.”
“Yeah, a little too good.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing… are you really going to go with him? Our mission involved only recon; the gathering of information.”
“Yeah, why not?”
“I don’t know. I just… I won’t be able to follow you.”
“Sure you will; just keep close and I’ll make sure to hold the door open.”
He shook his head. “It won’t work like that. If you go with him you’ll be on your own.”
Something about his voice, I thought, and then it hit me. “Jamie Armstrong,” I said, smiling at him. “Are you jealous that I’m going to be leaving this bar with a man other than you?”
He looked at me with an intensity in his eyes like I’d never seen—the kind that made my chest feel light. “So what if I am?” he asked.
“I don’t believe that…” I said, though my quick breaths argued otherwise. “And if you are, it’s only because Isabella is looking pretty good right now.”
He shook his head and returned my smile. “Nah,” he said. “You look hot, like really hot, but not nearly as hot as Max; especially when you’re wearing those skintight pants, a low-cut top… and that tactical harness of yours.”
Jamie’s words made warm tingles push down into the pit of my stomach. “Oh, whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes, trying to palm it off, but my hand was trembling a little. He couldn’t tell, but I could. “We’ve gotta do this, so I’m going to go back and get him to take me to the place. You grab the car and follow us, then get into the building whatever way you can. If I see an opening, I’ll hold it open for you.”
He nodded and opened the bathroom door. I started walking through it.
“Hey,” he said, catching me as I went to leave.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Be careful,” he said.
“Always.”
Not wanting to let the moment linger, I headed back to where Stanley was sitting. When I arrived, I placed my hand lightly on his s
houlder, smiled at him, and said, “Girlfriend’s ditched. How about that drive?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When Abel mentioned the facility powering the Angel Dome was innocuously hidden, as in, hiding in plain sight, my mind had gone wild with ideas of what that meant. I had pictured something like a candy store front with a secret door in the back, or a hole in the ground in the middle of a plot of abandoned land, or an elevator everyone thought was ‘broken’ except it would work for the person that had the right key.
Instead, the place Stanley drove me to was a standard generating station. The building sat in an out of the way place, away from most residential areas, and was surrounded by an electrified fence. Tall pipes that looked like smokestacks rose up into the overcast night sky, only they weren’t smokestacks. New Seattle didn’t burn fossil fuels like the world used to before Mother Nature decided to spit back in the face of humanity.
Instead, New Seattle was powered by fusion reactors; large, powerful, clean machines that could produce an almost unlimited amount of energy—at least, unlimited compared to the city which only needed so much power. Then there was also the energy the city produced thanks to its recycling initiatives and the turbines in the river. The thing about fusion reactors, however, was that they didn’t generate smoke, so there was no real need for there to be smokestacks on the building, and there was definitely no reason for them to occasionally spark the way they did.
As I got closer to the building I noticed these tall tubes, all three of them, were covered in rows of cables, all snaking up along the side of them and curling into the pipe itself at the top. I had no idea what the smokestacks or the cables were for, but then I wasn’t an engineer and had only a passing idea of how fusion reactors worked. In other words, I knew enough to know whatever this place was, it was not a real power station.
A quick glance at the rearview just as Stanley made the turn into the facility, going past the security checkpoint—little more than a booth and an automatic arm preventing cars from going through—and I saw Jamie’s headlights coming up behind us. He wasn’t far, but he was far enough to keep hidden, or make it look like he was going somewhere else.
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