by J. N. Chaney
The bus arrived at Whiles’ normal stop. He remained on board.
I felt a jolt of encouragement. This would reveal new information. In my mind’s eye, I saw this becoming the smoking gun that could save Vance. Minutes later, I felt that jolt evaporate as my own stop came up. I exited the bus without looking back and took two steps into the clinic before heading back out. I crossed the street, keeping an even pace, like Remi had shown me.
The bus continued forward. I had memorized the route the night before. I knew there were three more stops before it turned and came back through. Whiles could get off at any of them. I ran through the particular buildings adjoining each. A market, which could be for regular shopping or something else. Stop two was a corporate apartment complex. Another place where illicit behavior might occur. The third and final stop . . . My heart sank. It was the stop next to his wife’s employer.
I retraced my steps back to the clinic and entered. I provided my name and was told that the appointment was in error, as I had planned. With my cover in place, I waited for the bus to return. I boarded and saw Vance’s hopes disappear. Whiles was seated with his wife. They both got off at their usual stop and I rode the bus sullenly back to Quintell.
I had failed to find anything that could help Vance. Any plan to discredit Canton would take too long to put in place.
I met with Vance in his room to deliver the news. “I can’t find a way around it. They have what they need to proceed with your removal. Headmaster Whiles did what he could, but there’s enough evidence and some teachers, and students, really want you gone.”
Vance leaned against the wall, giving me an easy smile and a shrug. “These things happen.”
I felt a tinge of anger. “Don’t you care? Don’t you want to stop this?” I could feel myself shaking.
Vance walked over and sat on the couch with me, his usual nonchalance momentarily gone, but even as he leveled with me, he remained strangely upbeat. “This isn’t my first removal. I’ve still got two years, so it probably won’t be my last.”
I wanted to explain to him the lengths I had gone to try and help. The powerlessness I felt that nothing I knew could change the outcome. Nothing except for the dirt on Canton. “Look, Vance, you should know that Ca—”
He smacked me in the arm and stood up. There was pain in his eyes. “No! Don’t tell me. It doesn’t matter who or why. I didn’t cover my bases and things went bad. It happens, that’s the risk. You trying to fix it just makes it worse. Okay? Can’t you just . . . be a friend and not do whatever it is you’re thinking of—”
He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t get a chance. The door opened and Maevik came in.
She nodded to me and then addressed Vance. “The decision came down. I’m to take you to the transport.”
I was shocked. “Tomorrow. The decision comes in tomorrow?” I asked it as a question because I wanted it to be true, but I knew then that it wasn’t. Vance had known about the accusations the day before Manson and Gil stumbled onto it. His three days were up.
Vance punched me on the arm again and opened a drawer. He pulled out a small packed bag and followed Maevik out. I followed him through the hall and out to the courtyard, my mind working overtime for a solution to this—for a way to let him stay. I didn’t want the only friend I had in this place to disappear.
“I can fix this,” I said, ignoring what he’d said to me only a few moments ago.
Vance looked at me, setting his bag down beside the transport’s hatch. “What?”
“I can figure this out, Vance. I know I can.”
He just smiled at me. “You probably could, Alpha. You’re the smartest guy I know, but seriously, let this one go,” he said, no hint of distress. “Just do me a favor, alright?”
I nodded. “What is it?”
“When we’re free of all these rules and schools, look me up,” he said. “Or I’ll find you. Either way, let’s catch up. I wanna hear about whatever trouble you find yourself getting into.”
“Trouble?” I asked.
He chuckled. “You think I don’t know you’re up to something, Alpha? You might be the smartest guy in the room, but I’m not blind.” He gave me a quick wink. “Just be careful, whatever you’re up to.”
“Right,” I said, almost whispering the word, and then for the first time in a while, I felt a strange fear in my throat and a growing uncertainty about what would come next. “Everyone else here is boring,” I said, not quite knowing why I was saying it.
“That’s the truth if ever I heard it,” said Vance. “But you’ll be fine without me. You’re a full-on rebel now, Alpha.” He opened the door and tossed his bag inside then turned back to me. I could feel more eyes emerging from the rooms and staring through the windows.
Manson and Gil flanked me, for once dropping their affectations and just standing there like wounded and hurt kids.
Vance gave us a smile. “You boys take care,” he said, getting inside the vehicle. “Catch you on the other side, Alpha.”
The door shut as he said the last word, and then the engine roared to life.
Gil and Manson stood with me for a while, even after the shuttle left. We didn’t speak as the rest of the crowd dispersed and went about their days.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about any of this. Vance had been my only real friend at this place. I had a few acquaintances, sure, but no one else. Not like him. It was confusing, but I decided to push it out of my head for now.
I had other things to worry about.
16
I decided to reach out to Evelyn, rather than wait for her to contact me. Much to my delight, she had a new puzzle ready for me to solve. I took my usual trip out to Cascade Gardens on auto-pilot. Normally, I was careful to avoid being seen by anyone that might have a connection with the academy or could be overly attentive. Today, I merely walked the streets without caring who saw me.
I wanted to chastise myself for the lack of conviction and caution, but it didn’t register. If anything, I felt that the world didn’t value effort. That I would escape harm just because or succumb to it no matter what. No matter how much I planned, there was always a level of chance involved.
Vance had disappeared forever, and it had happened despite my efforts. I hated myself for not being fast enough, for not being smart enough to fix it.
Evelyn was waiting at the gate to the park. She seemed at ease but certainly focused her attention on me from a distance. I must have been a spectacle the way I slumped through the street and into the Gardens complex. If she noticed my mood, she didn’t comment as we entered the building and her apartment proper.
I took my usual seat and was grateful that Evelyn took a moment to pause at the kitchen rather than throwing the data pad at me immediately. I lost track of time for a moment and she was already back in the living area with a tray of hot liquids.
“Alphonse? You look like you could use some bolstering. I know these puzzles have been difficult so far, but I assumed you had more grit than this.”
I looked at her, sitting across from me on the other sofa. I couldn’t determine by her face if she had genuine concern or was afraid a toy was broken.
“Is this about that guard Remi had to deal with? Cost of business, you understand.”
I took the offered drink and breathed the vapor, steeling myself to deal with the coming tirade. For a moment, I perked up but hid it. People had an interesting tendency to run at the mouth when they saw someone feeling pitiful. Something to remember for another time.
“I need you in top form for this next puzzle. Tell me what you need, and I’ll see what I can do. Do you need to come back tomorrow? I would prefer sooner to later, but it will keep.”
I considered the urgency she expressed and the veneer of concern. The more I tried to isolate her motives, the more aware I became that I had stopped hurting over Vance and the more I felt a sinister glee to see through her motives.
I perked up and focused on her. “I’m good. I’m just
worried about the end of the term. Lots to plan during break. I’ve got a puzzle of my own to deal with there, but it will keep. What have you got for me?” I drank deeply from the cup while she pulled up the information. The liquid was warm to begin with and began to burn before I stopped. Pain, it turns out, was also a powerful focusing tool.
She handed me the pad and went back to the kitchen while I studied it. I watched her over the top of the pad as she left. She wasn’t heading for anything. She just wanted to be away from me while I worked.
The pad was heavy with data this time. Instead of a one-floor plan, there were three. A total of ten floors to the building in question with a target room listed on the third floor above ground with two more below a basement and sub-basement.
The second-floor plan showed retrofitting and changes to the first layout. The third showed conjectured changes since the second plan. The first challenge was in determining what changes were more likely than not.
The next set of information was about entry points and exits. The facility was Union, something important as it showed signs of internal defense from the Union military as well as technology purchased from Klemtite and Chrysalis. For a moment, it seemed like DSS had no presence in the building, but then I saw the internal human-manned monitoring station. The best of all worlds, or at least that was the projection of force at work.
The final set of information addressed personnel and staff movements—guard shifts and patterns of projected movement. The duty roster and employee access logs were sparse. Essential personnel only.
There was nothing in the way of utility and service lines. I saw why this was as well. Everything was internal and self-contained. Even the water waste was collected and manually taken out and in. It wasn’t efficient, but it sure as hell was secure.
I put down the pad and saw Evelyn lurking through the island window. “I’ve got what I need to start. Anything specific you need to tell me about the goal?”
As she came back into the living area, I noticed that her bedroom door was wide open. She caught my gaze then walked over to the door and secured it. She gave me a quick smile, “Now now, young man, a woman’s inner chamber is not for your eyes.”
She affected the adult scolding a child tone as a distraction. I saw two things in the room that I couldn’t forget. The first was a stock certificate related to Chronos Edu Inc., the same place that secured my school funding. Possibly a coincidence, but a peculiar one. The other was a photo of Evelyn and an older man. The pose suggested a familiarity, but formally so. Perhaps it was distant relative or a professional contact. The thing that was most shocking was that the man in the photo was Canton’s father.
She sat in the wingback chair and picked up the pad, then she flipped through the data screens until she saw something she needed to comment on. “This here.” She showed me the slide. “That box is the target, which you knew. What you didn’t know is that it can’t be moved without special tools.”
“Will we have access to those tools?”
She laughed. “Of course. Wouldn’t be much of a heist if we couldn’t take the loot out. All you need to figure out is how to find a window of time to get the box out. The wider the better, obviously.”
I drank the rest of my beverage. “I’ll get to work. When I have an answer, I will message you.”
She patted me on the knee. “I wait patiently, but not very. I’m counting on you to really dazzle me with your brilliance this time. Now let yourself out. I have other things to attend to.”
I worked on the problem through the evening and late into the night. It was a formidable task in scope and structure. The number of floors below and above the target meant covering a lot of ground on both an approach and an exit.
The internal, self-contained nature of the utilities eliminated cutting off vital services and there would be no sneaking in as faux maintenance staff. Everything was maintained by a dedicated, around-the-clock set of technicians that lived inside the complex. The expense to maintain the facility must have been immense, but you get what you pay for.
The guard patrols were the final hurdle. Their paths through the facility didn’t give enough time to make any pathway through feasible. Moving through one, even two floors without running into a patrol was conceivable, but not three or more, which meant a pathway into the facility was possible, but exiting would be more difficult. Moving the box made taking the same route back out a whole new challenge.
Of course, the routing was a lost cause because there were no useful entrances. The roof had an access portal and a landing pad for aerial transports. It also had a complete guard station and a single elevator that linked further into the complex. The front door had two checkpoint areas with an external bunker that had to be crossed before entering the building itself. Neither the basement nor the sub-basement had any external outlet. They were accessible only through an elevator system. Only a few floors had stairs that linked them with most of the complex being connected by elevators that crossed only two or three stories.
Each time I hit a seemingly impossible section, I turned my attention to another aspect of the problem. I was trying to figure out one element and then use what I knew would work to connect the next. It took me three passes through the basic elements of infiltrate, secure, exfiltrate before I came up with even one path that could avoid guards, and it only worked if we started inside the building at particular points.
I worked it down to key phases and difficulties.
The first was security technology. In previous jobs, we were able to overcome the devices with an array of exploits and knowing the placement of each system. Those setups were straightforward: determine a pathway to the target and then plan to eliminate each obstacle along the way. The changing nature of the obstacles in the way and not knowing exactly which company was supplying potentially overlapping systems meant more time at each obstacle to defeat and move past.
The second problem was guards. The patrols were well-thought-out and the number of guards for the facility was in excess of what would be needed for any other facility of size. Still, they did patrol and didn’t simply post man-to-man zones. Briefly, I wondered if this was to make it seem possible while remaining undoable. It was far more likely to be a practical matter of keeping the guards alert. You also couldn’t bribe or disable a single guard to breach an area. They traveled in packs of three, which would make them the equal of any infiltration group. A solo agent wouldn’t have time to disable enough of the technology to proceed.
Time was the next problem. Any route in would need to disable enough systems to mask the route out without running into maintenance staff or guards.
I considered three different tiers of success. Getting out clean, getting out but being noticed, and getting the box out but losing everyone on the way.
I faded into a stressful sleep as I considered this last set of parameters. What level of sacrifice was I willing to suggest? What level could I even imagine?
I struggled through classes the next day. The lack of sleep from the past few days was taking its toll. Between thinking about the Union puzzle and considering what to do about the Vance situation, I hadn’t slept a full night in over a week. Coupled with that was my severe disinterest in class. Nothing that they were teaching was applicable in the worlds I had been moving in. It was just facts and data, which I could look up or memorize. Theory was lacking and practical application even less common.
Still, maintenance was important. I managed through the day and walked to the track afterward. It was a place that I could keep myself alert while I thought through issues. It was also where Vance’s influence and life philosophy seemed strongest.
I passed by the athletic building and onto the track area proper, when I saw Manson and Gil. They were hovering around the far side of the track, looking grim. They waved me over, and I nodded. It was a strong departure from the way they greeted me during my first night at Quintell—a testament to Vance’s ability to create allies and weave peop
le together. His sociability was something I’d always lacked, and now I found myself missing it.
“What are we going to do, Alphonse?” Manson asked
“We can’t do nothing.” Gil scoffed.
I waved my arms in exhaustion and leaned down to start my stretches. “I’m here to exercise.”
Manson dropped down and followed my technique. “We need to talk about Vance. I know he’s gone, but we can do something. Can’t we?”
“Do something about what?” I asked. “Vance is gone.”
Gil didn’t bother stretching. Instead, he began to pace around the two of us. “He’s talking about Canton. I’ll say it. Canton needs to go down.”
I stood up and walked to the nearby wall of the athletic club for the next set of stretches. “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. It was tough to admit, but they sounded like they were on the verge of something rash. Knowing those two, I expected something crude and simple, like a straightforward brawl in the bathroom. I needed to work with them, or I would lose any opportunity at Canton myself.
Manson again copied my actions. “We’re thinking we can make his life hell. Just a little. Show him what it’s like.”
Gil bounced up and down, waiting for us to get moving. “I just wanna deck him and be done with it.”
I sighed. “That means you’re gone and Canton looks like a proper student menaced. You can’t hurt him publicly like that.”
We started a lap around the track. The motion helped me think. It was admittedly nice to have them with me.
Manson gasped and wheezed even on the warm-up lap. Gil, of course, had boundless energy.
He jogged in front of me a few paces and turned around the way Vance would have. “We should poison him,” he said, casually.
I stopped running and feigned a shoe adjustment, and Manson was happy to stop and catch his breath. I spoke in a quiet tone. “What do you mean, poison?”