by Jamie Davis
Kurt started to think he went too far, even though it was an act. Marci started crying harder and the tears flowed down to splash on the sheet of paper they’d printed with the address on it and a faked delivery name and destination in the complex. That was one of the weaknesses of the plan. They didn’t know anyone who worked in the warehouse so they just made up a generic manager name.
“Let me see who this is meant for. Don’t cry, I’m sure we can work this out,” the guard said. “Hand me the delivery manifest.”
Marci nodded and wiped the tears on the paper away with her fingers, smearing the ink and obscuring the name. “Oh, crap. I messed this up, too.”
The sobbing returned as she handed him the smeared page.
The guard took one look at it then at Kurt. They both shrugged at each other while Marci really poured it on.
“Look, you’ve got the address right at least. The loading dock for warehouse two is around the west side. Back in and leave it there inside the door. There’s an unlocked closet right there for after-hours deliveries. It’ll get processed in the morning. Somebody will figure out who it belongs to and no one will know the difference.”
“Really?” Marci whined, wiping away her tears, smearing her make up in the process.
“Really,” the guard said, nodding. “Now, go in there and drop your package off. I’ll forget to log you into the system so no one will know it was you who dropped it off and no one will be able to complain. My daughter’s about your age and I can’t imagine what would happen to her in this situation.”
Marci nodded her thanks, sniffling at her runny nose and pulled the van through the now open gate.
Kurt had to admit, her performance impressed him. He pitied any guy she eventually ended up with. That dude was going to be wrapped around her overly dramatic little finger.
Once they were away from the checkpoint and driving into the industrial park, Kurt gave a slow, measured golf clap. “How the hell did you do that? Real tears and everything. I’m impressed.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve had to convince someone I needed their help to get my way. How do you think I got daddy to let me attend that heavy weapons and ordinance course last year?”
Kurt shook his head. “I am never having children. You are all way too manipulative. Just don’t try that kind of thing on me, I’m on to your tricks now.”
“You’re on to one of my tricks,” Marci said with a sly grin. “The others you’ll never see coming if I want my way.”
Kurt held up both forefingers, forming a cross facing in her direction. “Devil child!”
Marci laughed and pulled the van around the warehouse marked as building two.
The loading dock was precisely where they thought it would be and she backed the van up to the loading dock ramp.
“You’re up,” Marci said. “I’ll be here waiting to help you load up on your way out.”
Kurt cast a glamor spell to obscure his face from the building’s cameras just in case the looped video didn’t work. It would blur his appearance in any recording. It could be unraveled with enough time and resources but it would help in the short term if Jonesey’s backpack didn’t do the trick. He grabbed the pink backpack from the van and ran over to the loading dock entrance. There was a delivery drop-off room by the door just where the guard said it was. It had a chute to send packages down, leading inside.
That was no good for him, though. He needed to get inside and open the main double doors to get the sarcophagus out to the van.
Time to see if Jonesey’s gear was going to work. Her hybrid, magic-tech devices had never failed him before. With Clara’s life on the line, though, Kurt’s doubts surfaced. It irked him. He usually brimmed with self-confidence.
If it was working, the magic infused into the backpack had already started the ten-minute video loop, so Kurt had to hurry.
Pulling the Gen 1 iPod shell out, he slapped it to the wall next to the security keypad. The magnetized backing adhered right away to the warehouse wall. Kurt slowly rotated the click wheel until he felt a slight tick under his fingertip.
Kurt pressed the button in the center of the wheel. Stopping, he looked and the first digit, a three, had been entered on the screen. From the size of the display, it looked like the keypad on the wall took a six-digit entry sequence.
He repeated the steps five more times until he filled in the remaining digits in the entry code. The door’s magnetic lock clicked open as the last number appeared on the display.
A quick glance at the screen gave him the lock sequence in case he needed it later.
328398
Pulling open the door and slipping inside, Kurt scanned the hallway for any signs of an interior watchman. There had to be at least one and maybe more in a place like this. The GEU goons were a paranoid bunch.
The hallway was clear and Kurt moved to the left towards the double automated doors in that direction. They swung open at his approach. According to the stored videos Marci accessed earlier, that was the entrance to the warehouse proper.
Moving quickly, Kurt slipped through the open doors, heading for the floor to ceiling metal shelving lined with pallets of confiscated property stacked up to the roof. It was hard to believe they had taken this much stuff in the ten years since the incident opened all the gates here on Earth Prime.
There were numbers painted on the floor at the end of each row of shelving and it didn’t take long to find aisle seven. It was the one before the final stack of shelves along the outer wall.
Kurt moved down the shelving until he reached the location Jonesey gave him.
He looked up, to the top of the shelf, high above him. Kurt shook his head. Nothing was ever easy.
According to the location provided by the elf, the box was up there, at or near the top. He had to climb up there to get Jonesey’s secret box. He sure hoped it was worth delaying him from getting out of here.
Resigned to what he had to do, Kurt shouldered the pink backpack and started climbing. It was hard work. The shelves were set up to be accessed by an automated system of forklift bots so there was no access ladder.
Each of the shelves was a meter and a half above the one below it to allow for a standard pallet to be inserted in the slots on each one. Kurt had to pull himself up to each shelf, pushing off with his feet against the crates and boxes on the pallets on the shelf below.
He finally pulled himself up to the last shelf and spotted Jonesey’s box sitting in a stack amidst others of a similar size and shape secured to a pallet. Everything was wrapped with clear plastic sheeting like the plastic wrap used for food storage. Slipping out his pocket knife, he thumbed open the blade, extending it fully with a flick of his wrist.
Slicing through the plastic sheeting holding the stack to the pallet, Kurt slid the ornate wooden box from between the other boxes. The box was still sealed and Jonesey’s glowing initial flashed on the top when he touched it.
He took it as a warning to leave the seal alone. Kurt wasn’t tempted. The box was surely warded. Besides, Jonesey’s business was hers and hers alone. He took off the backpack and slipped the box inside next to Marci’s confiscated pistol and the remaining gear for the primary mission.
He checked his watch. The timer he’d set up was down to three minutes remaining in his first ten-minute video loop. It was going to be tight getting out of here.
Kurt started to climb down then froze as the sound of an idle whistle sounded below. Whoever it was, they were making a poor attempt at reproducing the tune of a recent pop song.
Hanging by his fingertips from the shelf above, having descended halfway to the floor, Kurt looked down.
A security guard wandered down the aisle, shining his flashlight from side to side but not really looking for anything that Kurt could see. The guy looked bored and Kurt hated to ruin his night. It was too bad he needed to get rid of this variable in the job.
Waiting until the guard passed just below him, Kurt dropped the remaining five met
ers down, landing atop the hapless guard. Kurt pulled out his baton while he dropped. He knelt atop the prone guard and pressed the collapsed tip against the side of the guy’s head and thumbed the button.
The guard spasmed once and then lay still. Kurt pulled the small radio from the guy’s belt and slid the unconscious body under the shelf to hide it in the shadows there. He’d wake up in an hour or so with no memory of how he came to be there.
A chirp in his ear over his comm chip and then he heard Marci over his personal channel.
“That was awesome. The guy never saw it coming.”
“How did you see that?” Kurt whispered.
“I was bored so I climbed up to the camera here in the loading dock and hacked into the system. Don’t worry, the video loop is still playing on the guard monitors as far as I can tell.”
Kurt started down the aisle towards his final objective.
“Since you’re in there, check the cameras ahead of me and tell me if you see anyone else wandering about.”
“Got it. This is going great. You know, if you were the superstitious type, you could say it was almost going too well.”
Kurt cringed. He never used to be superstitious but with magic everywhere nowadays, coupled with the strange things he’d encountered during his deliveries, he’d developed a healthy respect for the jinx.
“Don’t say that again, alright, Marci?”
“Why? All I said was—”
“Please, don’t say it. You never know when a plan can go south. Saying that just tempts fate.”
“Come on, Kurt, what could possibly go wrong.”
Kurt turned the corner at the end of the aisle and stopped. He should be directly in front of the special holding area and the waiting sarcophagus.
The holding area was there. The warding runes were there, too, painted all around a large square on the floor. A three-meter-tall chainlink fence boxed off the special storage pen.
There were six boxes inside the secure area. None of them was the sarcophagus. None of the crates he saw were big enough to contain it either.
“See what I mean, Marci. You jinxed me.”
“I had nothing to do with that. They must have moved it. Give me a second to check.”
“Hurry up, we just used up the first ten minutes of the video loop.”
Kurt slid back into the shadows at the base of the floor to ceiling row of shelves behind him. He listened and watched, conscious of every second that ticked by.
Finally, Marci’s voice came through his earpiece. “I found it.”
“Excellent, where is it?”
He waited, but there was no response. Instead, he heard another voice over the comm link.
“Get out of the van with your hands up.”
Chapter 11
The signal cut off and Kurt spun around to head back towards the loading dock. His worry drove him and he picked up speed with every step until he moved at a full sprint. If Marci got nabbed here breaking into a federal facility, Trent would probably kill him.
The warehouse was huge, though. It took him too many long, painful seconds to run from where he started in the northeast corner all the way back to the loading dock.
Kurt slowed when he got to the hallway at the loading dock entrance and checked around the corner.
Seeing it was clear, he started towards the large double steel doors leading back outside at a dead run. Unclipping the stun baton from his belt, Kurt hit the doors with his shoulder, swinging them both wide.
He crouched and searched for a target, then relaxed and stood up.
Marci stood beside the van’s driver’s door. At her feet, two unconscious, uniformed security guards lay in a compromising position, one atop the other, each facing in opposite directions. She’d posed them with their faces in the other’s crotch.
Marci turned towards the doors as Kurt bolted through them. She seemed pretty pleased with her security guard sculpture. “What are you doing here? I’ve got this. Go get the sarcophagus.”
“I thought you needed help.”
“Does it look like I need help? Go.” She pointed back into the warehouse.
Kurt turned and collapsed the baton and returned it to his belt. One of these days, she was going to get herself into a mess she couldn’t get herself out of. While he wanted to be there to see it, along with the look on her usually smug face, he knew if he were there when it happened, he’d have to be the one to figure out her rescue.
Marci said the sarcophagus had been moved to a room near the loading dock, one that had a time lock. He started back down the corridor towards the warehouse. Kurt spotted the one it had to be right away.
The panel beside the steel door had a large timer display showing the current time of day on top of the keypad. Knowing it probably wouldn’t work, he tried tapping the same code from the loading dock door anyway.
328398
The display flashed red once and then the current time was replaced with a countdown clock for a few seconds. The countdown showed eleven hours and twelve minutes remaining. That would be about seven in the morning.
Kurt couldn’t wait until seven AM. That was likely the time the day staff arrived and he planned on being long gone by then.
“Marci,” Kurt said activating his internal chip. “Are you back on comms?”
“I’m here.”
“I found the room with the time lock. It says it’s got over eleven hours until it can be accessed. Any luck hacking in from there?”
“No, I was trying the last hack I could think of when I was interrupted by the two guards.” She paused for a few seconds before continuing. “There is something I could try, but I’ve never done it to anything but a gate portal. Hold on. I’ll be right there.”
Kurt checked the time remaining on the video loop. Even though the guards had seen Marci, the video loop made it so their actions and faces wouldn’t be available for anyone to run recognition programs on them. His magical glamor was still in place, too. Anyone who saw him over a video camera right now would see a bald, pudgy guy in a delivery uniform.
Marci would be exposed though when it all went out the window as the video loop reset in five minutes. They had to be out of the loading dock before then.
Marci raced into the corridor from outside and skidded to a stop in front of the door.
“You should stand back. I have no idea if this will work, but I’m sure the side effects are not good for living tissue.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m able to use a combination of magic and astrophysics to convince closed gates running on a chronological cycle that it’s time to open again. I do this by altering the timeline in a small area. In theory, I should be able to convince this dumb lock to think it’s already morning, at least temporarily.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“It could fuse the lock timer, making it think that time has stopped. In that case, it will never open and whoever needs inside will have to cut their way through the door.”
Kurt took a step back to give her some room and gestured to the door. “Go ahead then. I’ll be right over here. Remember we don’t have much time and that thing is heavy.”
Marci used her finger and began tracing a glittering, golden trail around the timer box on the wall. She muttered something under her breath, repeating a chant over and over again. Kurt couldn’t make out what language it was.
While he possessed some magical ability and could cast a few spells, Marci worked on a whole different level. Her background and education gave her the ability to both work powerful magic while understanding the universal physics that governed it. It was a combination few if any mages had.
Knowing he needed to be ready to move the sarcophagus, Kurt opened the pink backpack. Jonesey had given him three other items to use getting the sarcophagus out of the impound. One they wouldn’t need. It was a magical dampening field device. It would have neutralized the magical wards in the interior holding area.
; Since they didn’t have to bypass those wards inside the warehouse anymore, that device wasn’t needed.
The other two devices looked like a pair of five-centimeter diameter steel pipes, bent at each end to form a C-shape. Each of them was about thirty centimeters long. The flat open ends of the pipe were all capped with a circular plug that showed a flat section of circuit board, all soldered firmly into place. A wired toggle switch was taped to the curve at one end of each pipe handle with a single strip of duct tape.
Pulling the two handles out, Kurt zipped up the pink backpack and slipped it onto his back again.
Glowing golden runes covered the wall around the time lock when he looked back at his partner’s handiwork. Marci stopped scribing what must be the last of the characters and stepped back from her handiwork.
“Here goes nothing.” She glanced at Kurt. “It’s just another gate, right?”
“Do it. We’re running out of time.”
Marci turned back to face the door, extended her right hand, palm outward, and said, “Tempos.”
A blinding flash of white light left Kurt blinking away purple spots in front of his eyes. He rubbed his eyes for a few seconds and then blinked until he cleared his vision.
The door to the storage room had swung open, the timer on the lock’s display now flashed zero hours, zero minutes.
“Come on, Kurt. The lock is only temporarily out of this time cycle. Everything will reset in a few minutes and we need to have the door closed and locked again by then or the alarm will sound.”
“That’s about how much time we have left on the video loop, too.” He ran past her into the five-meter square storage closet. The only thing in the room was the sarcophagus, sitting in the center of the room on a wooden pallet.
“Take this and get on the other side.” Kurt handed Marci one of the pipe handles.