She knew she would have to decide on a course of action in the next few minutes. Her next steps remained a mystery, even to her. She decided to let destiny choose. She would board the next train to approach the station, regardless of which direction it was heading.
Evangeline had never realized that she had left her communicator at home before leaving for the Crisis Unit. She had been too preoccupied to notice. The minutes passed and she heard a train glide toward the platform. When she saw the train that headed toward the LTZ, she made a mental note to herself to get to the base as soon as possible and check on the photograph inside her locker.
The train slowed to a halt and people started shuffling on and off the platform. She boarded and found an empty seat near one of the thresholds between train cars. She sat and closed her eyes, resting her head against the sidewall of the train. The gentle vibration lulled away the images that tried to stay center stage in her mind.
She did not notice the display across the platform blinking her name.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The female agent tiptoed through the mechanical system above the security station where her partner was being detained. She was of medium height with a slender build, but the massive air ducts enabled her to walk without bending over. She padded along with the dexterity and silence of a cat, grateful for the natural grace and stealth in her body’s movements.
She followed the map of the ducts on her arm console. Her orders were to free her partner from custody. If his identity was revealed before she got to him, many lives would be forfeit to keep the secret. Her controllers were less concerned with the number of lives lost than the light the revelation would shed, but blame of their deaths would fall on the Dissidents.
She approached a T intersection in the ductwork that was not represented on her schematic. “Another change during construction that never made it to the official building records,” she said, her words inaudible in the rush of air flowing through the duct.
Fan blades and noise attenuating fins curving in both directions blocked her path. She had to choose between two options: she could disable the fans and dismantle the fins, or she could take her chances and descend into the corridors of the precinct.
Her orders were clear and the priorities of her assignment made the choice simple. Disabling the fans and removing the fins would require time she did not have to spare. She backtracked to an air register located above an empty office, across the corridor from one of the station’s power distribution rooms. She made mental preparations to create a diversion using the power grid, which would distract the security offers away from her partner.
The lights in the office were on, and the register was in the corner adjacent to the door, which had a small window. She would have to be quick to enter the office without being spotted by someone walking down the corridor. She removed the air register and deactivated the lights as she dropped down onto the floor, flattening herself against the wall. She slid along the wall toward the door and peered into the corridor through the narrow pane of glass.
Her arm display told her there would be a security checkpoint down the hall, which she soon located through the window. Behind the counter sat a male officer arguing with a female officer who held the arm of a young woman dressed in lingerie and had her hands cuffed behind her back. If the agent hurried, they would not detect her as she broke into the next room.
She opened the office door just wide enough to squeeze through, but when she zipped across the hall she found the power distribution door locked. She turned her back to the door and watched the scene at the checkpoint while she used the interface on her glove to override the magnetic lock. A faint beep and a click sounded as the door unlocked from the inside.
She pried open the door and slipped inside as the female officer grabbed her detainee by the arm and began pulling her deeper into the precinct. The agent kept the handle turned to prevent the lock from engaging as she eased the door closed. She heard the heavy-booted officer and the young woman’s clacking stilettos pass by just as the panel closed. She let out a slow breath and gathered her thoughts.
She turned to face the power distribution panels and activated the interface on her arm console. According to her map, she was in the primary of three distribution nodes for the precinct. Another node was close to the motor pool, and the third was fifteen yards from the detention cells holding her partner.
A simple computer system managed the power grid. She was familiar with this kind of sabotage from the advanced training she received after her recruitment. She could use the weaknesses in the grid to create a disturbance, a common tactic in her line of work.
She began to program the power system to cause feedback from the precinct into the main power junction outside under the street, which would overload the system. The power grid began to display warning indicators. She reprogrammed the alarms to remain silent until the feedback caused an overload at the main junction, interrupting power to the precinct. She also disabled the emergency lighting, just to be on the safe side.
The power levels continued to build. An explosion outside the walls of the precinct, told her everything was going according to plan. She sat down on her heels, waiting. In the darkness of the power distribution room, she studied a glowing floor plan of the precinct. Off in the distance she heard screaming and shouting grow as the thunder of a dozen pairs of boots rushed past the door, tromping through the dark in the direction of the explosion. When the last pair of boots faded in the distance, she opened the power room door and inched her way deeper into the precinct.
She skulked through the empty corridors, using the night vision built into her hood along with her body’s natural catlike stealth to avoid detection. She dodged the hand-held lights that flashed across the walls as she scurried down corridors, ducking behind furniture and lurking in the shadows as she progressed toward her target without making a sound.
Her distraction was successful. The security personnel were preoccupied with preventing the escape of detainees and dealing with the destruction and chaos outside.
She made her way like an oil smudge in the darkness to the detention cells. As she crept near the cellblock, she discovered the officers preventing detainees from escaping with a makeshift blockade of desks and chairs. With the magnetic locks disengaged, the prisoners had escaped from their cells, attempting to overrun the barricade with brute force. They crashed into the tower of desks one by one in an attempt to create a breach. So far, they had been unsuccessful and remained trapped in the cellblock.
The agent knew the blockade was impenetrable; that route was no longer viable. She concealed herself under a desk in the far corner, consulted her map, and scanned the room for options. A small duct passed over the outer office and the detention cells, but she would have to crawl through it to get to her partner.
She left her small hiding spot and crept through the dancing shadows made by the officers’ personal lights to an empty office out of their line of sight. She climbed up on a desk and dislodged a ceiling tile, pushing it out of the way and pulling herself into the ceiling plenum space. After she secured herself to a steel beam, she replaced the ceiling tile to its original position and crawled along the underside of the beam.
Upside down like a spider, she clung to the structure by her hands and heels. She felt like she was exploring a new world from her reversed perspective. She kept her eyes on the duct that floated ahead of her while she kept her ears focused on the battle raging in the threshold below. The noise of bodies thrown upon the barricade and the shouts of the people below got louder and she approached her destination.
When she reached the mechanical duct, she suspended herself from her feet and removed a damper that blocked her access. The damper hugged onto its housing, but she managed to slide it away from the flange. The scrape of metal on metal seemed to go unnoticed by the scrum of officers and prisoners fighting for control of the entrance of the detention cells beneath her. She lowered her hands against the top of th
e ceiling, dropped into a crouch outside the small opening into the round metal tube, and climbed inside. Once inside the duct, she army-crawled through on her elbows, dragging her legs behind her as she inched toward her goal.
She paused to consult her map when she had passed beyond the bulkhead over the entrance of the detention area. Sixteen cells of varying capacities lined either side of a central aisle below her. The rear wall of each cell was twenty-four inches of solid concrete. The dividing walls between the cells were panels of four-inch thick security glass, leaving the front wall hosting a sliding door of bar steel. Through the periodic dampers in the duct, similar to the one she removed to gain access, she noticed the absence of a finished ceiling. These little square windows gave her the chance to inspect the detention cells with her own eyes, and gave anyone who looked up the chance to see her inky mass.
The quarantine cell was located on the left at the end of the row. She continued to crawl on her elbows and knees until she reached the damper that filtered the exhaust air coming from the cell. She knew removing the damper was unavoidable, but an observant guard might notice the damage in the duct and raise the alarm. Until then, she hoped the bustle would keep everyone’s attention and that the guards would assume her partner had removed it and escaped during the distraction. Her outside involvement would have go undetected.
She pressed against the damper, but she did not have enough leverage from the inside to force it free of the flange. Reaching across her body, she pulled a small tube from a compartment on her left upper arm and sprayed the pressurized liquid around the damper. The metal flange holding the damper in place began to bubble and erode.
She took hold of the damper with one hand and twisted it from the melting remnants of the flange. She leaned it against the side of a smaller duct that branched off from the trunk she occupied. Sliding closer to her destination, she used the duct openings to make intermittent observations of her partner. He sat motionless in a metal armchair, cuffed at his wrists and ankles. The personal lights from the security officers danced across his dark form in random patterns.
She whispered in the darkness, knowing that her controller had been monitoring her progress.
“I’ll reach my target in three minutes. Have him ready to move once I get there. I’ll only have a few seconds to remove his restraints before we risk detection.”
She resumed the steady crawl toward her goal. The duct swayed by millimeters back and forth with each advancing movement. The shifting and swaying within the duct caused the damper to tilt and it fell over with a clang. She flinched, froze, and zeroed all her attention to the skirmish at the entrance behind her. The frequency of impacts made by bodies against the barricade was slowing. There was a gap between crashes after the damper fell over, but they seemed to have resumed with greater intensity.
A voice came into her ear. “We’ve been unable to restore a connection from our end. Assess him for damage and report back.”
“Understood,” she whispered as she continued down the duct.
She reached the downward bend at the end of the duct, just over her partner’s head.
“Control, I have visual,” she whispered.
She peeked through the slats in the air register and made sure no one else was present before she dislodged it. She dropped it onto his lap, hoping to minimize any noise that might draw attention to the cell. It bounced of his legs and slid onto the floor with a sharp crash. She cringed as she watched the crowd of people attacking the makeshift barricade. The crash of the register had coincided with a prisoner launching his body against the mound of desks. She released a sigh and rolled over onto her back to navigate the downward bend in the duct.
Slithering like a snake out of a tree, she shimmied out of the duct head first, dragging her toes against the wall of the duct to control her descent, and placed her hands on his shoulders. His body became rigid at her touch. He sat up straight and supported her weight as her feet cleared the duct opening in the ceiling. She did the splits in the air to balance herself as she lowered her body down like a gymnast and straddled his lap.
“I’m in,” she whispered.
“Assess,” the voice commanded. “Is he damaged?”
She slid off his lap and crouched on the floor. Starting at his feet, she began to feel along his legs, thighs, and hips. He was unresponsive to her touch. She patted his waist and chest, but still found no signs of injury. She returned to her position on his lap, resuming her examination with his hands, and moving upward along his arms, shoulders, and back.
“The extremities are undamaged,” she whispered to the disembodied voice. “Torso also appears undamaged. I’m checking his head now.” She scooted her body closer and began a gentle probe of all the hills and valleys of his face and skull. There seemed to be no detectible damage to any part of his body. Her hands slid down the sides of his head, and shifted to the back of his neck when she paused.
“Control,” her hood muffled her urgent whisper. “I think I found the problem.”
“What is it?” the voice asked in a nervous tone.
“I think I detect damage to the collar.” An ominous shiver surged down her spine. It was serious. Security protocols forbade her from examining the collar in an unsecured location with potential witnesses. Getting a closer look at the collar would require the removal of the hood, an action prohibited to all agents unless under direct order. Her mind raced through the options in the seconds that ticked by. “Please, advise.”
She had a spare collar tucked away in one of the pouches in her uniform. She did not know if her controllers would take the risk of installing the replacement collar with civilians a few yards away. There was the possibility she would be ordered to terminate her partner to protect his identity. It was very expensive to produce an agent, however; they just might take the risk and attempt replacement.
“You have thirty seconds to replace the collar,” the voice pressed in a warning tone. “Do it quickly, or you’ll have to begin termination procedures.”
She did not bother to acknowledge the command. Like a dancer, she spun around his torso and stood behind his chair. She removed the redundant collar from the pouch on her right thigh, balanced it on his shoulder, and pushed his head forward. He offered no resistance. She used the controls on her glove to activate the seam that connected his hood to the rest of his uniform.
The seam split in the darkness and she activated twin LED lights on either side of her head, flooding his neck with a soft, red glow. The open seam of the hood revealed an oval-shaped metallic strip fastened to the skin of his neck between two cervical vertebrae, pulsing with a subtle blue light. Four recessed buttons were located at the sides and the top and bottom of the silver oval. She noted a large dent on one side.
“What could inflict this kind of damage?” she whispered to herself.
She pressed the buttons on the top and bottom of the metal strip and the glow faded to a dull translucence. There was a soft clicking sound and his head slumped and dropped to his chest as if he had fallen asleep. With his head bowed against his chest, she continued with the procedure.
Twenty seconds remained in which to replace the damaged collar. With the buttons depressed, she pulled the plate away from his neck. As she pulled, dozens of microfibers as fine as spider’s silk extended from the plate in her hand into miniscule ports dotting across a corresponding plate embedded into his skin. The filaments stretched and became taut as she pulled the plate away.
When the plates were three inches apart, the tiny strands began to curl into themselves and retract toward the damaged plate in her hand. A low-pitched hum indicated that the retraction process was complete and she placed the damaged collar into the pouch on her thigh. She picked up the replacement collar from his shoulder and positioned it above his neck plate. She held the plate with her thumb and finger and depressed buttons on the sides.
A hum resonated from the new plate as it activated. It began to glow and pulse as the hair-like strands
unwound like the tentacles of an octopus reaching out into the dark ocean, feeling their way to their next meal.
The fibers found their corresponding micro ports and began to tug against her hands. She kept a firm grip on the plate as it closed the gap between her hand and his neck. She stole a glance toward the detention entrance. The chaos seemed to be subsiding. The maintenance crews would soon have restored power to the station and the security officers would regain order and confine the inmates to their cells. She was running out of time.
The glow of the plate intensified as it locked into the plate imbedded in his neck. When the connection was complete, his head rose from off of his chest and he looked around. He turned his head, spying out of the corner of his eye the visual confirmation of his partner’s black figure standing behind him.
When the two agents made eye contact, he gave a silent nod and flexed against the restraints that held him bound to the chair. She severed the restraints binding his hands and feet with the corrosive spray, then she turned around to face him. He interlocked his fingers at waist height as she stepped into them. With little effort, he lifted her up into the open duct. She planted her hands on the inside wall of the duct and pulled while he pushed her up by soles of her feet.
She rolled again onto her back as before. As she pulled her legs up into the duct, he stepped up on the chair. He jumped and grabbed onto her feet. He hung there suspended, dangling for a moment until she began scooting herself along the bottom of the metal tube, dragging him along with her. A sliver of skin peeked out from underneath his unsealed hood. It would have to wait until they were in a secure position to reactivate the seam.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 20