Father Figure

by Laura Peyton Roberts

  “I'll give it a try,” he said, pulling off one glove. Sticking his tongue through his mask, he licked the palm of his hand and placed it on the scan pad.

  “Gross!”

  “Don't get squeamish on me now,” he muttered, rotating his palm slightly as the beam began to scan. He kept his hand barely moving, hoping to trick the machine into reading his lines in the right places, but when the scan was complete, a single red word was displayed: DENIED.

  “Okay,” he said, dropping his hand and taking a few steps back. “New plan.”

  The side kick he leveled at the security pad was so forceful that Sydney felt its vibrations through her feet. The pad sheared off the wall, dangling crazily by a few wires. Noah yanked the pad off completely and began crossing the exposed wires. A moment later, she heard something click.

  “Open the door,” he said, still holding two wires together.

  She sprang forward and grabbed the doorknob. The lock had disengaged; the door swung open easily. “We're in!” she whispered.

  “Did you doubt it?”

  “That's rhetorical, right?”

  Noah rolled his eyes as he walked past her into the lab. Following just behind, Sydney saw a long, antiseptically white room humming with computers. There were no windows, no other doors, not so much as a scrap of paper lying out on one of the tables. Computers, associated furniture, lights, and a security camera were the only things in the room. And then Noah pushed a panel in the back wall aside and Sydney saw the safe.

  “Here's where I need you to be my lookout,” he whispered, using his gloved left hand to stretch the bare fingers of his right. “This shouldn't take too long.”

  She nodded but didn't move, wanting to watch him work. Noah's fingertips closed lightly around the combination dial of the black wall-mounted vault. He pressed his ear to its metal surface and began spinning the knob slowly, his eyes dropping closed to increase his concentration. The technique he was using relied on feeling the way the dial moved, mentally cataloging the places it spun freely or slowed or clicked to figure out the position of the safe's tumblers and, ultimately, the combination. Noah was an expert at safe manipulation, but the process took focus—and in a big room with only one exit he would be vulnerable the entire time his attention was off the door.

  Tearing herself away, Sydney headed back to the lab entrance. If anyone showed up on the fifteenth floor, she wanted to know in plenty of time to warn Noah and get them both out of there. She moved cautiously into the doorway alcove, then eased her head into the hallway and looked in both directions. There was no sign of another person, and unlike the thickly carpeted hallways downstairs, the hallways on fifteen were surfaced with a hard, echo-prone linoleum. She ought to be able to hear footsteps before anyone got too close. Pulling back into the alcove, Sydney leaned against a side wall and prepared to wait.

  The nervous sweat she had broken on her way up to the lab turned gradually cold and clammy as she fidgeted in her hiding place, wondering what was taking Noah so long. Back in the van, he'd assured her that the safe wasn't high-tech and he'd be into it fairly quickly, but now, with nothing to do but wait for something to go wrong, every second she stood there felt like a week. Her heart fluttered with dread, and when an air-conditioning unit clicked on overhead, she nearly jumped out of her coveralls.

  Minute after slow minute crept by. They had gone too far to bail out now, but every second they stayed in the building increased their chances of being caught. If they didn't get out soon . . .

  Sydney couldn't take it anymore. With one last check of the hallway, she hurried back to Noah.

  “What's going on?” she whispered.

  “Shhh!” he whispered back, every muscle in his body tensing. “I've practically got it.”

  “What if someone comes?”

  “That's your job,” he reminded her, still working the dial. “Just give me another second. . . .” His fingers stopped abruptly. “There! I think that's it.”

  Taking his ear off the safe, Noah moved his hand to the door latch. “Feeling lucky?” he asked her, giving the handle a twist.

  The door opened on the first try.

  In the exact center of the safe sat a portable hard drive, like a pearl in an oversized oyster. Sydney reached for it eagerly, knowing the intel it contained could change history.

  Noah was right to break in, she realized. If the bad guys had gotten here first, stealing this program would have been just as easy for them.

  Her hand closed over the paperback-book-sized device. She lifted it out of the safe—and set off a piercing alarm.

  Wailing echoed off the white walls, so loud it seemed to be inside her head. She almost dropped the drive to cover her ears, cringing in pain when she realized she couldn't do either.

  Noah grabbed the hard drive from her, stuffing it into his coveralls. “Run!” he yelled, pushing her toward the door.

  Sydney ran, her sneakers slipping on the linoleum. Tearing out of the lab, she bounced off the opposite wall and sprinted toward the elevator. The alarm was even more excruciating in the hallway. She curled her arms around her head, trying to protect her eardrums. She'd never heard such a deafening sound; her skull felt about to explode.

  The door up ahead was still wedged open with Noah's screwdriver. But, to Sydney's amazement, it was slowly closing anyway, forcing the screwdriver backward over the metal threshold in a shower of small sparks.

  Security override, she realized, running full tilt. Whatever she'd set off was trying to lock them in the building. Panicked, she glanced back over her shoulder. Noah was well behind, but running fast. He'd make it through the door.

  Clearing the threshold, Sydney dashed straight to the freight elevator. To her relief, it was still on their floor, its doors wide open. Running inside, she pushed the button for the ground floor; Noah would be there any second and she wanted to speed their exit. But the instant she touched the button, something terrible happened. The doors didn't close with the customary gentle laziness of elevators; they slammed shut like a vault. Sydney glimpsed Noah's horrified face through the narrowing gap as he came around the corner and realized what she'd done.

  “No! Stairs!” he cried, lunging forward.

  But he was too late. The doors had shut tight between them.

  “It's locked up!” she screamed over the siren, frantically pressing buttons. None of them worked anymore.

  “I'll get the screwdriver,” he yelled back.

  A moment later, she heard him prying at the joint between the doors.

  “You have to go!” she shouted. “Get out with the intel!”

  Dropping the screwdriver, Noah gave the doors an angry kick. They didn't even budge. The siren was still wailing.

  “Okay,” she thought she heard him say. Then nothing.

  “Okay?” Sydney pressed her ear to the crack. “Noah? Noah, are you out there?”

  Nothing but the wailing of the siren.

  He left me! she realized, stumbling backward. Even though she'd told him to, she'd never thought he would. How am I supposed to get out of here now?

  She glanced frantically around the elevator's metal interior, but there was no place to hide. The buttons were still locked. She spotted what might be an emergency trapdoor in the ceiling near one corner, but it was too high to reach.

  The siren stopped abruptly, the quiet it left behind so intense that Sydney couldn't hear anything except the ringing in her ears. She slumped with relief, just for a moment.

  And then she heard boots running down the hallway. A security team was coming, and it was headed in her direction.

  Think, Sydney. Think! she exhorted herself.

  A handrail wrapped three sides of the elevator car. It only protruded six inches, but there was a chance she could use it to climb to the ceiling, getting the leverage she needed by placing her feet on adjoining walls near the corner.

  The racket of boots was growing louder. Trembling, breathing in shallow little gasps, Sydney put her
right sneaker on the railing and jumped with her left leg, trying to bridge the corner and catch a second foothold. She missed, barking her shin on the way down. Another try; another failure. There was so much noise in the hall she could hardly think.

  The third time she tried, her left foot caught the railing. She teetered in space a moment, her hands grasping empty air. Then she threw her weight forward and braced herself on the corner walls. Her head nearly touched the ceiling. Not wasting a moment, she pushed hard on the panel above her. It popped up and out, revealing a small escape hatch.

  I did it! she thought. Now if I can get through there without falling . . .

  The angle was awkward and she was trembling so hard she could barely control her limbs, but somehow she got her hands, then her forearms up over the edges of the opening, the rest of her body dangling beneath her. A few properly timed kicks later, she had pulled herself out onto the elevator's dusty roof. Hurriedly, she replaced the panel, eliminating the last trace of her presence. Then she crouched in the darkness of the elevator shaft, waiting for her knees to stop shaking.

  The elevator doors opened beneath her.

  “It's clear!” someone shouted.

  The doors closed again. She was safe.

  For the moment.

  They'll check here eventually. I've got to get out of the building.

  She could still hear the security squad running around, searching for intruders. Every second she delayed made her capture more likely. Looking up toward the top of the shaft, Sydney saw a glimmer of light.

  If I could climb one of these elevator cables to the roof, I might be able to get out where that light's coming in, she thought. There have to be fire escapes down the outside of the building.

  It wouldn't have been her first choice, especially since the roof was eight stories up, but it was the only option she saw. Grabbing a thick steel cable firmly between her gloved hands, Sydney began to climb.

  At first, she forced herself not to look up, knowing the distance above her head could only discourage her. Instead, she focused on pulling smoothly with her arms, using her legs to help her climb. The thick leather gloves Noah had provided were a blessing to her now, and the coveralls, although hot in the stuffy shaft, protected her legs from the cable.

  Just keep going. One floor at a time, she told herself determinedly.

  But it didn't take long before her arms began trembling and her shoulders had knotted painfully. Each pull got harder and harder, until she could barely keep from crying out. Just a little farther. A little farther . . .

  And then she looked up.

  I'll never make it! She was only halfway up, and her entire body quivered from the strain of holding on. But she had no choice; she had to keep going.

  She had just begun to climb again, calling up her last reserves of strength, when something clanked loudly overhead. The cable jerked to life, burning upward through her gloved palms. The elevator was in motion, headed for the roof. Sydney slid down as the car traveled up, its roof getting closer and closer.

  Timing her release as well as she could, she let go of the cable ten feet above the car's roof. It flew up underneath her, hitting her feet with a breathtaking thud. She collapsed into a heap on the moving car.

  Anyone inside had to have heard that. But no voices sounded beneath her. The car was apparently empty.

  Scrambling into a crouch, Sydney looked up. She was almost to the building's roof. And now she saw the dangerous machinery overhead, coming toward her out of the gloom. An enormous pulley system powered the car's rapid rise, and she was about to be pulled right into it.

  Her heart was beating triple speed. There was no time left to think. Spotting a narrow ledge in the shaft wall, Sydney gathered her courage and leaped.

  Her toes and face slammed into the wall. She teetered on the steel I beam that formed the ledge, barely hanging on as the car rushed past her toward the roof. The wind it made nearly sucked her backward off her perch, but somehow she held on, flattening herself against the shaft wall as the car reversed direction and rushed back down. She heard it rumbling far below before she opened her eyes again.

  The wall of the shaft she clung to was made of steel beams placed at regular intervals with vertical columns tying them together. A mishmash of pipes and conduits ran across this surface, providing a few more handholds. If she fell, she was dead. But she could see the source of the light now: a short, horizontal shaft a mere eight feet above her.

  Taking a deep breath, Sydney began to climb. A minute later, she had pulled herself into a ventilation shaft and was thrilled to see open rooftop on the other side of a flimsy grill.

  I made it! she thought ecstatically, kicking her way through the grill. She wriggled out of the shaft, blinking in the bright sunshine. Then she hurried to the edge of the roof and looked over the side of the building in search of a fire escape.

  What she saw instead nearly took her breath away. The street in front of SST swarmed with police and security vehicles. An impossible number of officers filled the parking lot. She couldn't possibly escape down the front of the building.

  She was wheeling around to sprint for the back wall when an unpleasantly familiar noise caught her attention—the whir of helicopter rotors. The aircraft was circling in from the north, its pilot certain to spot her any moment.

  Sydney glanced at the parking lot again, paralyzed by indecision. She hadn't the slightest chance of getting through the police barricade. But the helicopter was flying closer by the second. Even if she found a way down the back of the building, she'd never make it to the ground without the pilot's seeing her.

  The truth she'd been denying ever since the freight elevator had slammed shut hit her like a revelation.

  She was trapped. She was exposed. And she was all out of options.

  My career as a spy is over.

  11

  IT CAN'T BE OVER, Sydney thought desperately. Not now. Not like this.

  Wilson's hopes for her future had been so high. Her own had been even higher. She had joined the CIA because she wanted to help her country, to make a difference. If she was exposed as a secret agent, she might still be able to do that—but not in SD-6.

  The thought galvanized her. Charging back to the ventilation shaft, Sydney dove into its opening. Her coveralls slid along the slick metal surface, catapulting her forward. For a moment she was airborne. . . .

  Then her hands closed around an elevator cable, holding on with more strength than she'd known she had. Her legs swung through space. One of her knees kinked around the cable and she eased her grip, sliding down the shaft like a fireman on a pole. When she finally spotted the elevator car at rest on the ground floor, she knew what she was going to do.

  If I could get beneath that car, no one would ever find me. There had to be some sort of dead space; the elevator couldn't slam the ground every time it went to the bottom. Moments later her feet touched the car's roof, quietly this time, and she let go of the cable.

  No voices came from inside the car. Sydney crept to its edge, looking for a way down. The car itself offered no handholds, but there was a good crossbeam on the shaft wall. Taking careful aim, she jumped across the gap.

  Her hands closed on the beam, her feet scrabbled onto a pipe, and immediately she began climbing down. Her body was on autopilot now, doing what it knew how to do, what it had been trained to do, taking her brain along for the ride. She cleared the car and released her grip, dropping the final few feet to the bottom of the shaft.

  Sydney landed in a crouch on the concrete floor of a pit so dark she could barely see. She held her breath, listening to her own pounding heart, un-til she could make out a subterranean room only slightly bigger than the elevator car. As she had surmised, large cylindrical shock absorbers kept the bottom of the elevator a few feet off the floor. Rising tentatively, she moved cautiously forward to explore this cramped space.

  There was no sound at all from up above. The pit's concrete walls were soundproof, and th
e motionless car formed a low roof over her head. She was considering staying there overnight, then sneaking back into the elevator and walking out of the building disguised as a janitor on Monday morning, when she came upon a door.

  ELEVATOR REPAIR ACCESS—EXIT, said a red-lettered sign. Below that was a deadbolt allowing the door to be unlocked from Sydney's side. For a long moment she just stood there, afraid of setting off another alarm. Then she reached out and flipped the bolt, yanking the door open in nearly the same motion.

  Light flooded the elevator pit, dazzling her eyes. The exit had opened into a masonry-lined outdoor shaft three feet square with metal ladder rungs leading up to ground level. She could see a low brick wall to keep people from falling in, and above that, bushes and blue sky. She was outside and, so far, unobserved.

  Sydney stripped off her ski mask, coveralls, and gloves, tossing them back into the pit before letting the access door close behind her. She hesitated nervously at the bottom of the ladder, smoothing her ponytail, making sure her shorts and tank top looked clean, and weighing her limited options. Then, grabbing the first rung, she climbed slowly to the top, every nerve stretched for the first sign of danger.

  She had emerged on the side of the building she and Noah had entered. The distance between her and the street was short, and, to her amazement, the street was deserted. She could hear shouts and sirens from in front and in back of the building, but no one was watching this side. Even the helicopter was out of sight. Stepping out over the low brick wall, Sydney squared her shoulders and began walking toward the street.

  Don't run. Don't rush. Don't even hurry, she cautioned herself as she went. If anyone spotted her, she wanted to look like a lost college girl, not a person with something to hide. It took every bit of self-possession to keep her stride to a saunter and her ponytail swinging behind her, but she made it to the sidewalk undetected.

  Every step increases my chances, she thought, continuing straight across the street. No one at SST knew what she really looked like, and she wasn't carrying a single incriminating thing. I can make it. I'm almost safe.