by Jack Heath
Despite these drawbacks, Ash wished she was wearing the balloons now.
The journey up the ramp seemed to last an eternity. But the two paramedics didn’t notice the extra weight. Each one probably assumed they were doing most of the work, while the other was slacking off. Ash felt the gurney level out as it reached the top of the ramp. The concrete changed to tiles, the noise of the crowd outside faded, and then she was in the library.
Good plan, Benjamin, she thought. I’m inside.
“This way,” one of the paramedics said, and Ash felt the gurney change direction. The lifts must have been knocked out by the power failure. They were headed for another ramp.
The gurney lurched again – this time she was descending, feet first. The vault was on the bottom level.
“Do we know whereabouts on the bottom floor the guy is?” the paramedic asked.
“Yeah,” the other one said. “Military history section.”
The first one swore as the gurney reached the bottom of the ramp. “How the hell are we supposed to know where that is?”
“There’s a sign. Right there.”
The tiles changed to carpet. The gurney swerved, crashing through some double doors, and jolted to a stop. The wheels ceased clattering.
There was a second of silence. Ash held her breath.
“So where is he?”
“Damn it. Wrong section, or wrong floor?”
“I’ll check this way, you check that way.”
Footsteps receded away from the gurney to the left and right. Ash waited until they were very quiet, very distant.
“Mr. Fields?” one of the paramedics called. “Can you hear me?”
She triggered the release catches on the buckles holding her up – legs, then chest. She thumped to the ground, louder than she’d intended, and froze.
Silence.
“Hello?”
“Thought I heard something.”
“Yeah, me too. Hello? Mr. Fields?”
Ash scanned her surroundings. Books, shelves, desks with built-in chairs. A couple of the bookcases had, she saw with surprise, fallen in the explosion. Benjamin’s story about a trapped grandfather was more credible than she’d expected.
She couldn’t see either of the paramedics, but she could hear one of them approaching. She ran in the opposite direction, ducking between two bookcases and crouching behind a desk.
She saw one of the paramedics – a heavy-set man with frameless glasses – reappear near the gurney. “Can you hear me, Mr. Fields?”
Ash held still. The paramedic’s eyes swept across the shelves and seats. She wasn’t entirely concealed by the desk, but he didn’t seem to see her. He was looking for an old man trapped beneath a bookshelf, not a teenage girl crouched under a desk.
He turned away, and jogged down another aisle. Ash let out a lungful of air, half-stood, turned around—
And saw the other paramedic approaching.
She dropped to the floor and scuttled away from the desk, heading for a dim triangular hollow beneath a bookcase that had toppled against the adjacent one. Then she realized that a fallen bookshelf was exactly what the paramedic would be searching for, but it was too late to change direction. She scampered into the darkness, palms flat against glossy covers, feet crushing open pages.
“Can you hear me, Mr. Fields?” the paramedic called. From his tone, Ash couldn’t tell if he’d seen the movement or not.
She emerged out the other side of the tunnel, swerved left, and ran down another aisle. The vault was just ahead – she could see a glint of steel between the rows of books.
Do I keep trying to dodge the paramedics until they go back upstairs? she wondered. Or do I try to crack the vault so I can hide in there?
She ran a quick risk-calculation in her head. The vault’s door was carbon steel with a dual-control analogue combination lock, designed to be operated by two people, each knowing half the code. One hundred million possible combinations, 99,999,999 of which were rigged to sound the alarm. The walls were steel-reinforced concrete panels, thick and dense. The consistency of concrete is measured by its “slump” – how far it sags in the drying process. The greater the slump, the weaker the concrete. This stuff, Ash knew, had a slump of zero. It had been packed into the moulds rather than poured, and vibrated for hours to remove all air pockets. It was about as close to indestructible as human-made substances got.
But none of that would stop a thief who had the combination. And thanks to the button camera Benjamin had planted on the coat of one of the library employees weeks ago, Ash knew six out of the eight digits.
The vault, she decided. Seconds later, she was in front of the door, looking at the twin dials and the release button.
The flaw in dual-control analogue combination locks was that the person twisting the second dial could see the final position of the first, if they looked. This meant that they knew three quarters of the combination, not half. And thanks to Benjamin’s camera, Ash knew it too.
She twisted the first dial clockwise to 1, and then anticlockwise to 61. Then she turned the second dial clockwise to 45, anticlockwise to 38, and hit the release button.
The door didn’t open. Wrong combination. If the power had been on, an alarm would have started shrieking right about now.
Ash twisted the dials to 2, then 61, and 45, then 38, and pushed the button. Still nothing. She tried 3, 61, 45, 38.
This was why she and Benjamin hadn’t attempted to break in before now – there had been a ninety-nine per cent chance she’d set off the alarm. But with the power down, all she had to do was be patient.
8, 61, 45, 38. The vault door stayed closed. 9, 61, 45, 38.
She could hear the paramedics clomping around elsewhere in the library. Hopefully they’d searched around here already, or at least wouldn’t come this way until she was already inside the vault.
Ash tried 17. Then 18. Almost a fifth of the way through.
She wondered where Benjamin was. She’d advised him to run away from the cops as soon as they took their eyes off him, but she knew he knew that if he did, they would realize he’d been lying and call back the paramedics. Which would leave Ash in a tricky situation if she was still strapped to the underside of the gurney, waiting for an opportunity to escape.
She wasn’t, but Benjamin had no way of knowing that – so he was probably still with the police, buying her as much time as he could.
The code didn’t begin with 29. Nor 30, 31, or 32.
Get out of there, Benjamin, she thought. Don’t get caught for my sake.
She tried 40, 61, 45, 38 – and heard a faint click inside the lock. She hit the release button, and heard a louder click as the wheel on the vault door spun a couple of degrees.
“Yes!” she whispered. She grabbed the wheel and twisted. After three complete rotations, the door clanked and swung outwards on well-oiled hinges.
And then Ash heard one of the paramedics approaching.
She slipped into the vault, grabbed the handle on the inside, and started to pull the door shut behind her. But when it was almost there, she froze.
He was too close. He would hear it when it closed.
Ash held the door a centimetre ajar and waited.
The paramedic’s footsteps got louder. Ash held her breath as he walked into her field of vision, and stopped. He scanned the nearby bookshelves for signs of the phantom Mr. Fields.
Then he turned around and walked back.
Ash waited for ten long seconds, silently counting. Then she pulled the door the rest of the way shut. She clenched and unclenched her hands a few times, trying to stop them shaking.
The inside of the vault was as black as tar. The air was cold and dry – to better preserve the books, Ash guessed. She dug a penlight out of her pocket, clicked it on, and a circle of light appeared on the wall.
At first glance, the vault’s contents were no different from the surroundings outside – just shelf after shelf of books. But as Ash drew closer, she could s
ee that the books in here were significantly older than those in the military history section. Time had stained the pale covers and bleached the dark ones, leaving the titles difficult to read. Some had gold threads woven into patterns on the spines. Ash didn’t touch any of them, worried that they would crumble to dust beneath her fingers.
Most of the books appeared to be laws, with titles that had words like amendment and declaration in them. A few novels were mixed in, too – she saw a first edition of Bleak House, and a handwritten draft of Frankenstein. There was a huge Bible that looked old enough to be the original.
What Ash was looking for would, she hoped, stand out among these ancient tomes: a four-terabyte portable hard drive, which held a program written by a Terrorism Risk Assessment employee, Kathy Connors, in her downtime. It would probably be about the size of two small laptops stacked one on top of the other, but Ash had no idea about the colour. She also wasn’t sure exactly what the program did, but thanks to the size of the drive, she knew it must be something impressive. Four terabytes could contain about two thousand times the amount of code used to write Windows. And whatever it was, she knew it had got the programmer killed – her home had been burned down by an angry mob who were convinced she had murdered a child in a neighbouring suburb. The subsequent police investigation revealed that the child had never been anything more than a rumour.
How the drive had found its way from the blazing house to the city library vault, Ash had no idea. But thanks to the hit list, she knew it was here, and she knew the programmer’s family would pay to get it back.
She was running out of places to look. She’d run her penlight over every shelf, and hadn’t seen anything that looked remotely like a hard drive. She crouched down and started searching under the shelves.
Lights flickered on above her, and suddenly the inside of the vault was as bright as day. The cops must have got the power back up. Ten minutes earlier, Ash thought, and I would have set off the alarm.
A whirring sound, behind her.
Ash jumped. But it was only an old PC booting up. She hadn’t seen it as she walked in – it was probably used to index the vault’s contents, and rigged to switch on any time the door was unlocked.
Ash scanned the table the computer sat on, looking for signs of the hard drive. No luck. Just a phone, a fax machine, a modem and a printer. The set-up must have been decades old – these days, a single device would perform all the functions of those four machines. The computer chassis looked like it belonged in a museum rather than a library.
Ash stared at it. Where’s the best place to hide a hard drive? she asked herself.
The answer was right in front of her. Inside a computer.
She kneeled beside the chassis and felt around the edges for a release catch. These old computers had lots of empty space inside them – even combined, the motherboard, processor, hard disk, memory card, video card and disk drives didn’t take up much room, but the chassis needed to be spacious to keep the components from overheating. There might just be enough room inside for a clever thief to conceal a four-terabyte hard drive. It would be the perfect hiding place, since the computer chassis wasn’t likely to be opened, and even if it was, the drive wouldn’t look out of place to anyone other than a computer engineer. If she could just—
There! With a faint click, the wall of the chassis came loose, and Ash was staring into the innards of the computer.
Bingo. The hard drive looked much newer than the other components. Less dust, sleeker design. It was smaller than she had expected, but still conceivably large enough to hold 4TB of code. Ash unplugged it from the motherboard, put it on the floor, and reattached the wall of the chassis. Then she pocketed the drive, stood up, and turned to leave...
Wait. She turned back, staring down at the fax machine. Something had caught her eye. A sheet of paper in the printout tray of the fax machine. Something was typed across it in 12-point Times New Roman, the default font for practically every application on every computer in the world:
HELP ME
37.4215, -122.0855
ALICE B
“Have they found him yet?” Benjamin demanded.
“They’re looking,” the detective said calmly. “I’ve just got a few more questions for you while we wait, okay?”
Questions were bad news. Benjamin had been in the back of this police van for almost twenty minutes already, and the more questions he was asked, the more lies he had to tell. The more lies he had to tell, the more inconsistencies he had to worry about. Inconsistencies like –
“What exactly was your grandfather doing in the library at this time of night?”
“Reading, I’d imagine,” Benjamin said. “That’s what it’s for, right?”
He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Nobody likes a smart-arse, and Benjamin could tell by the detective’s hardening gaze that he was no exception. He looked like a guy who’d been a cop a long time. Loose shirt, no tie. A mouth that had forgotten what a smile felt like. Eyes as dark and merciless as gun barrels.
“But it closed hours ago,” he said. “Why was he still there?”
Benjamin looked at his feet. “Grandpa has Alzheimer’s disease,” he said. “He’s pretty good, mostly, but sometimes he gets confused. You have to tell him things a couple of times before he hears them. I guess he just missed the announcement that they were closing.”
The detective looked a bit sympathetic at that. Benjamin guessed that he, like most people, had an old relative whose mind wasn’t what it once was.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the detective said.
“Thanks,” Benjamin said.
His voice sounded familiar to Benjamin, but he couldn’t work out why. A couple of cops had come to his school on career day, but they’d both been women, so that wasn’t it.
I must have heard him interviewed on the radio, he thought, or something like that. It’s not like I know any cops. Ash and I always try to avoid them, especially since—
His blood ran cold. What had this detective said his name was, again?
“Do you think maybe I could help with the search, Detective Smith?” Benjamin asked.
“Detective Wright,” the cop corrected. “And don’t worry, it’s under control.”
Detective Damien Wright. No way. This was the same guy who’d caught Ash five months ago at Hammond Buckland’s headquarters. Benjamin had been listening as Wright interrogated her and handcuffed her to a piece of furniture – and as Ash escaped while he was out of the room.
Wright hadn’t been able to track her down; she had given him a fake surname when he questioned her. But if he found out she was here, she and Benjamin were both in deep trouble.
But how can I warn her? he wondered. I can’t use the radio while he’s watching me. And if she’s in the vault already, the signal won’t get through the walls.
The detective must have seen the anxiety on Benjamin’s face. “All right,” he said, standing up. “I’ll go see if they’ve found any sign of your grandad.”
“No!” Benjamin said. “I...uh...”
Think! he told himself. Come on!
“Don’t just leave me here,” he said. “On my own, I mean.”
Wright sighed. “You can’t come with me, kid. It’s a crime scene.” He stepped out of the van, leaving the door open. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said.
As soon as Wright was out of earshot, Benjamin grabbed his radio. “Ash, come in,” he whispered. “Ash!”
There was no answer.
Ash picked up the sheet and reread the words.
Help me, 37.4215, -122.0855, Alice B.
What had she stumbled across? A prank? A test? A postmodern poem? Or a real-life distress call from someone who needed rescuing?
And then she no longer had time to think about it. There was a thumping on the vault door, and a voice, shouting, “Mr. Fields? Are you in there?”
Ash gasped. She’d assumed the paramedics had left. She ran behind a shelf, stuffing
the paper into her pocket.
“Why would he be in there?” one of them asked.
“Don’t know. But he’s nowhere else in the library, so we have to check.”
“I’ll call the cops – maybe they’ll be able to get the combination.”
Scanning the area for a hiding place, Ash cursed Benjamin for his acting skills. If he hadn’t been so convincing, the paramedics would have gone home by now, instead of standing outside an unlocked door, wondering about the combination. This would be funny, she thought, if it weren’t so terrifying.
“Mr. Fields!”
“I don’t think he’s in there.”
“If he’s trapped, he might not be able to respond. He might not even be able to hear us through this goddamn—”
Clank. The door swung ajar, just a little. One of the paramedics must have touched the release button. Ash scuttled back towards it, ducking behind the carbon-steel frame. Hopefully the paramedics would be looking straight ahead at the shelves when they entered.
“What do you know – it’s not even locked!”
The door was pulled all the way open, and the two paramedics ran in, one of them yelling, “Mr. Fields, can you hear me?”
Ash tiptoed sideways towards the door, quickly, quietly, willing them not to turn around. Almost there...
The paramedics were walking down an aisle, heads turning left and right. “I don’t see him,” one was saying.
Ash was almost there. She didn’t take her eyes off the paramedics. Come on, she thought. Look harder. Search every aisle thoroughly.
She was three steps away. Two. One.
She was out! She turned to leave—
And crashed into a police officer. She yelped.
“Whoa,” the officer said. “What are—”
Their gazes locked. Ash’s eyes widened.