by Utley, Todd
When she arrived home, she was already overcome with emotion anyway so it wasn’t hard at all to have a good cry over the whole thing. She thought to herself that maybe Dodge really did die in there and that it was him but the team didn’t want her breaking down and blowing the whole plan. She decided to just be strong, she knew either way she would still have Dodge back again.
When she arrived at the house, rescue workers and firemen were everywhere and the house was a mess. Then they brought out the Gurney with Dodge on it, when she saw him she really fell apart big time. Just the thought of him being in that body bag was just too much. Sarah had been called and she was just arriving home. Bobby had also been contacted at the driving school and was informed by his instructor that there had been an emergency. He called his mother right away and of course he was distraught over the whole thing too.
He and Sarah both knew that their Father had a clone already at the farm, but still, the thought of their Father dying in a fire was horrifying news. Bobby would have to return home early now to keep up appearances, acting as if there was no clone of his father at the farm. Otherwise, Cyrus would be tipped off by the lack of concern for a dead Father and a grieving Mother. What kind of a son stays at a race academy after his Father loses his life in a house fire. He would leave for home first thing in the morning, cutting his week of training short by one day. It didn’t bother him much because the last day was really just a day to take the written test and say goodbyes to everyone you met there. The instructor reassured him that he could return someday when he felt able and finish the course if he still wanted to.
At the house the media was in full three ring circus mode while capturing all the gruesome details of the event and of course a more than delighted Cyrus was watching the breaking news in his office.
“Hello, I’m Brian Wilcox reporting live on the scene for News 21 at the home of Dodge Kerrington, the world renowned electronics engineer and scientist credited with the invention of several devices that have made our modern MedicStar systems a reality.
Some of you may recall that we did a story on Mr. Kerrington and his family a few months ago when their house was burglarized. Authorities believed the culprits might have been after trade secrets related to Mr. Kerrington’s high level position at ESS, one of the engineering firms largely responsible for the success of the Medic-Star systems.
Authorities have not yet released any official statement as to the cause of this fire but they did say at this point it appears Mr. Kerrington was a victim of a kitchen fire that spread rapidly and that he was apparently overcome by the smoke while attempting to battle the blaze.
Mr. Dodge Kerrington the renowned Electronics Engineering Genius is apparently deceased at the age of forty-five. It’s such a terrible loss for his family and friends, the scientific world, and of course, all of civilization in general. It truly is a tragedy that a man so involved with medical technology has been lost with no hope for Restoration. It seems that the fire and smoke were so intense that firefighters were unable to get his body out for quite some time.
When they got in and recovered his body he had been dead for more than forty-five minutes. His wife arrived here within just a minute or two and was able to positively identify her husband. They rushed him to the hospital where they were able to start his heart again but found no brain activity. This all took too much time causing them to exceed the one hour cut off by about fifteen minutes. Authorities ruled that it was simply too long for an attempt at Restoration, Brian Wilcox reporting live at the scene for news 21, back to you in the studio Alise.”
Cyrus was delighted with himself, not too much brought him happiness like the site of his accomplishments on the local news. He shut it off and summoned Glitch and two armed guards. He told them to prepare a vehicle, they were going for a ride to one of the safe houses to question a person of interest.
Glitch was surprised for two reasons, one that Cyrus was even talking to him so soon after the lab incident? and two, why was Cyrus being nice enough to invite him on an excursion? It worried him a bit but he went along after stopping by his office to get his gun. He concealed it on his belt in a small holster that his jacket covered.
Five minutes later the four of them were heading to the safe house to begin the long awaited interrogation of the one and only real Dodge Kerrington. Glitch didn’t understand why Cyrus was doing this now and why he didn’t just do this to begin with. There must be a reason but he hadn’t offered to share it and Glitch wasn’t about to ask.
Meanwhile back at the compound Todd and Toby were on high alert. They had observed Glitch and Cyrus leaving together. Todd had never seen them both away from the compound at the same time. From their prior behavior, he assumed their security plan included the rule that one of them should always be there to keep an eye on things. Now they were both gone and they were together, it was very unusual.
With the both of them gone, it was the perfect time to install the cable in the server room. The plan was simple, Todd would go down to the server room with a six pack of beer that he had snuck in for just such an occasion. The guards never got out of the place and they definitely didn’t get much beer or anything else good to speak of.
Todd knew that a cold six pack would be irresistible. While he and his guard buddy would be around the corner in the men’s room sluggin down that beer, Toby would be busy in the server room without Cyrus or Glitch around to catch him.
The last time Toby saw John was at the golf course. He had given him a video looper hidden inside the drink bottle along with the other goodies. It was a small section of cable with a little snake bump in it that housed a tiny digital recording device. You simply unplug the video cable at the camera and place this small section of cable between the camera and the original connection. As soon as it was connected it would record one second of video and begin looping it over and over again until removed. It was simple but very effective.
As long as there wasn’t anything moving in the field of the camera during that one second of recording then the looped video playing back after that would give the illusion of an empty room to the security guard watching the monitor, you could hold a full blown square dance party in there and that guard would never be the wiser. When Todd showed up at the server room he felt very lucky, the guard on duty was one of his friends. This guy was the meanest looking biggest toughest dude you would ever not want to meet, but once you got to know him you realized that Ronny was the most gentle and polite guy there was.
Ronny loved magic, he was always doing tricks for everyone, he wasn’t very good at it which made it even more entertaining. Todd approached him in the corridor and Ronny saw him coming.
“Hey Todd, old buddy old pal, what’s shaken?”
Todd pulled the six pack out.
“I was wondering how your magic is today, maybe you could make this disappear.”
Ronny started laughing.
“Hell yeah I can bro! What’s the occasion?”
“Let’s go somewhere to drink this and I’ll tell you all about it,” said Todd.
“Sure Buddy, let’s just slip into my office over here. I’m very confident that I can work some magic on that six pack. In fact I’ve made twelve packs disappear all by myself so with your help a six pack will be a cake walk.”
They disappeared into Ronny’s office, a.k.a., the men’s room. Toby walked down the hall way with a cap on keeping his head down so the cams couldn’t get a clear shot of his face. Once inside the door of the server room he observed a camera pointing down each of the four isles between the servers. He went to the first one but he couldn’t reach the camera connection because it was up too high. He looked around for something to stand on. He found a three step folding stool behind the door. “Perfect.” He grabbed it and put it right below the camera. He climbed up and got out the short section of cable and inspected it carefully.
He rehearsed it in his mind while doing practice hand movements at the same time. He would quickly disc
onnect the cable from the camera with his right hand while holding the jumper in his left. This would allow him to get it reconnected quickly with no fumbling around. He concentrated on exactly all the movements he would go through and then he went for it. It only took two seconds to disconnect and reconnect. He hoped that no one was looking at that particular monitor when it went black for two seconds. Just in case though, he went back out of the server room.
He knew from walking it off himself that it took exactly two minutes and twenty eight seconds for a guard to walk from the security room to the server room even at a brisk pace. He set his stop watch as he left the room. He went down to the end of the hall and around the corner into the dark. It was after regular working hours now and the offices were vacant and dark. He pulled a small mirror from his hip pocket and used it to peek around the corner. He figured if a guard was in the area the security office might send him instead of coming down themselves.
He waited a full four minutes. Plenty of time for someone to arrive if they had noticed the two seconds of dropped video feed; nobody showed. He headed back down the hall and into the server room again, he went down the first Isle and began looking for a good place to plug in the cable. Much to his surprise all the ports were filled. This was a problem that they had not anticipated. For some reason there were no left over ports on any of these servers or network switches. He couldn’t just unplug something because that might cause someone’s PC to stop working and then a tech or Glitch would be down there trying to fix it and find the device.
He looked at about three hundred ports, row after row, there were no unused ports. He needed to go to the next isle but that would require moving the camera loop device to the camera pointing down the next isle and starting all over again. He was about to abort the mission when he had an idea. He pulled the little mirror out of his hip pocket. There was a space between the server racks to allow some of the heat to escape through the vents on top of each row. He took off his sweat shirt and he was able to shove his arm through to the other side and run his fingers along the ports that were facing the next isle.
The rack ends were wider than the servers themselves and would block the view of his hand sticking through from the camera in the next isle. He put the mirror in his left hand and put his flashlight in his mouth. He put the cable in his right hand and stuck it through to the other side. He started moving along sideways on his knees looking and feeling for an empty port. After several minutes his finger finally fell into an empty hole. “Thank God!”
His whole body was beginning to cramp up from the awkward position he was in. He fished the cable through a little further with his right hand and turned his head sideways to shove both arms through just as far as he could. He was working blind now because his arms were barely long enough to manipulate the cable in his fingertips even with his head turned and his chest pressed firmly against the servers.
He struggled for several minutes turning the cable around a few degrees trying to get it aligned so that it would plug in. He had such a tight bend in the cable that it kept springing back on him before he could get it in far enough for it to lock. He was about to give up he heard the click. “Yes, it was in!”
He pulled his arms out and rested for a minute. He leaned back and arched his back to relax the muscles that had begun to cramp in his back and legs. Then he realized again how sore he was from the wild romp with Alice and he smiled at himself.
“She was something else!”
He reached through again to make sure the cable was routed smoothly in between the others so that it would blend in. He knew the loose end didn’t need to be plugged in anywhere but it shouldn’t be seen either. He pushed it into the middle of a large bundle of wires that passed through from one side of the rack to the other. There were several different colors of cables that had been used and it appeared fairly random. The black cable that John had provided blended in nicely as there were a lot of other black ones.
Looking for this thing would be like finding a needle in a haystack. It would not be discovered by eye, it would have to be someone who tracked it and knew exactly which port it was in. According to John that was not going to happen because he had encrypted it so well that not even a guy like Glitch would be able to trace it.
He put his sweat shirt back on and packed up his mirror and flashlight. He headed out but something wasn’t right, he went back and looked around and then he realized his hat wasn’t on his head, it was in between the server racks. “That would have been bad!” He retrieved his hat, put it on and headed out.
Just to be sure he looked around again and checked his pockets to make sure he didn’t leave anything else. He got the stool back out and climbed up to retrieve the loop off the camera. He rehearsed it in his mind again just like before. He removed it and reconnected the cam in less than two seconds. He jumped down and put the stool back.
“Phew! Smooth as silk.”
He peeked out into the hall, the coast was clear so he exited calmly with his head down slightly. He went to the men’s room where Todd and his friend should be and stuck his head in.
“Oh sorry,” he said, and went right back out. That was the signal to Todd that he was done, mission complete.
The whole procedure had only taken about thirty minutes but it seemed more like an hour to Toby. Todd stayed and drank the rest of the beer with Ronny. They were having a good conversation and Todd was thinking he might be able to get Ronny on board with what they were doing.
Ronny had arrived there about six months after Todd and the two of them hit it off quite good from the beginning. Back then everyone thought they were all going to get out and be rich but since then they had all seen Cyrus kill off over half his force for one infraction or another. He would just recruit more people to take their places and he made examples of people early on that disobeyed.
Lately though, he had backed off the killing and that had some people spooked and wondering what would happen next. Everyone was so terrified of him that they pretty much towed the line. Todd and Ronny could easily be terminated if they got caught doing what they were doing right now. The thing was, they were both so well connected with all the other guards that whoever caught them would just wind up joining them.
Beer was a premium commodity in that place; a guard would probably let you start a small fire in Glitch’s office if you gave him enough beer and a Cuban cigar. The beer was almost gone and Ronny had been away from his post a little too long so Todd made his move.
“Hey man, you ever think about trying to get out of this gig?” Ronny was a little surprised at the question.
“Well, yeah I guess I have but I thought you were a lifer man, what gives?”
“Well I don’t know I was just thinking the other day that if there was a way to get this damn bomb outta my gourd, then I could blow this pop stand and go start a new life doing something cool.”
“Like what?” Ronny asked.
“I don’t know, maybe start my own custom hot rod shop, I’ve always loved old muscle cars.”
Ronny looked at his finger nails and rubbed his thumbnail across the nail on his forefinger as if it had a snag on it.
“Hmm, sounds like a fun thing to do, but uh, how do you propose a guy could get free and clear of this whole mess?”
“I don’t know exactly, let’s go over to the server room and talk, don’t want to get you in trouble you know.”
“Yeah good idea, I’ve been away a good while now.”
Not five minutes after they went over there another guard stuck his head in.
“Hey Ronny, just checkin on ya. Hey Todd,” he said, and then he was gone.
They went back to their conversation. Ronny told him he would get out of there if he ever got the chance, maybe Todd would like an apprentice in his new hot rod business.
Todd said, “well Buddy let’s make a pact, the first one of us that sees an opening comes and gets the other one and we go for it.” Ronny smiled.
“It’s a de
al buddy,” and they did a fist bump to seal the agreement.
“Well it’s gettin late Pal, I gotta get up early tomorrow and head out to the house to play Daddy to Toby again.” They both got a laugh out of that as Todd was leaving.
Out at the safe house Glitch and Cyrus had entered the garage and put the door down. The two guards went in first and discovered the situation and came back out to get them. Cyrus walked in and immediately began looking around for clues.
“Where in the hell was Dodge?” The prize that he had waited on for so long. Where were his men? He had sent two of his best guards to carry out this assignment. Not only were they trustworthy they were tough as nails. Nobody in their right minds would mess with those two gorillas.
Glitch went into the kitchen and saw the note and chuckled a little to himself. “Oh boy, this isn’t going to be good! But he can’t blame me for this one no way no how.” He had kept this entire plan from Glitch so this was all on Cyrus, no one to blame but himself.
“Um, Cyrus, you might want to come in here and take a look at this.”
“What is it Glitch?” Cyrus snapped as he entered the room. Glitch just pointed to the note and then watched with restrained delight as Cyrus read it to himself. Glitch could see his lips moving to the very words he had just read himself, and then noticed a big vein starting to throb on Cyrus’s forehead. What they didn’t know was that the note was actually left there by the Black Ops Team Cleaners, not Cyrus’s men. It read . . .
syris, we kwit! don’t wast yur time on our head boms becauz we are alredy long gown. we aksidently killed yur buddy dodge so we chucked him in a dumbster and set it a fire. sorry yur hole rullin the world thing did no work out! ha ha p.s. see ya in hell!
Cyrus began to shake and convulse with anger.
“Guard!” He yelled. One of the guards came running.
“Yes Sir,” he said.