by Jess C Scott
When Tavia appeared, she was holding the maps and a bunch of tools and equipment. Her hair and slinky outfit were impeccably styled. She had spent the last few minutes freshening up—it made her feel better, which gave her more confidence regarding her duties with the break-in. Dresan and Leticia followed behind. A neat coil of wires sat on the surface of a laptop that Dresan was carrying. Leticia looked like all the blood had gone from her face.
“Are you all right?” Anya asked, once Leticia had gingerly stepped into the train carriage. “When did you get here?”
“Just ten minutes ago,” Leticia replied, with a drawn and tired smile, which made Anya think the rehearsal must have been a long one. “I got your message.” She loosely interlocked her fingers, before turning to face Anya. “Are you prepared?”
Anya shifted her gaze to Nin, still giddy from his kiss. Nin was busy fixing a transparent earpiece into one of his ears, which was attached to a clear coiled wire piece that went round his neck. Dresan and Tavia had one on too.
“We’ve been busy,” Anya replied Leticia, not noticing the wily smile on Nin’s face as she spoke. “We got you something too.” She remembered the diamond dust pendant Nin had specially made for them, and gave Leticia the one she had been keeping in her pocket.
“Wow!” Leticia loved it, and put it on right away. She was fascinated with the delicate gleam of the icicle pendant. She looked happier when she smiled, though still a little bit distracted, like half of her attention was elsewhere.
Leticia and Julius, Anya thought, picturing them in her mind. Like me and Nin a while ago…
“They let you try the Coca tea?” Anya said with a knowing grin to Leticia, who was a tea aficionado.
Before Leticia could answer, Nin handed Anya a utility belt. It held a few important pieces of equipment—a belayer lock, cell compartment, thin coil of rope, and two keys on separate loops. Anya recognized them as the substitute pieces Nin had mentioned earlier.
He had a belt on himself. Anya noticed he had two guns strapped somewhere along the sides of his waist as well, which gave him a lean, mean, dangerous look.
“Need a crash course?” Nin asked. He had no qualms giving a quick overview, even if he had only a minute to spare.
“My dad taught me,” Anya reassured Nin, gesturing to the metal loop that was the metallic turquoise belayer lock. “We used to go rock climbing.” Turning to Leticia, and pointing to the utility belt she was putting on, she commented, “We should get one of these.”
Nin shot a quizzical look over to Anya.
“We like to travel light,” she let him know, as she opened and snapped the loop of the belayer device. Hearing the ‘click’ of the loop brought her right back to the indoor hall where she had first been taught how to rock climb.
“Keep going, Anya!” she heard her dad’s voice, as she thought back to her first rock climbing session. She had missed her footing several times, but finally managed to reach the top after much encouragement from her father. He had always believed in her, even when she didn’t believe in herself, and she missed him.
“What are you using to pick the lock?” Nin asked next.
Anya gave a quick smile. “I have my own tools.”
“Okay.” Nin glanced at her pocket, wondering if she had hidden it there. Maybe Leticia had brought it along for her.
Dresan was working on the laptop, and showed Anya the picture of the first lock she had to pick.
“You’ll be entering from here,” Dresan pointed to a small ventilator near the ceiling of the key room in the Omega building. “You’ll enter the room using that”—he pointed to the belayer on Anya’s belt—“and have ten seconds to get the keys. If it’s open for any longer, it starts to beep, which alerts the guard over here.” He circled an area a few paces in front of the key cabinet. “The guard has a bunch of screens in front of him, which show what the security cameras are capturing. We’ve created something to distract him for fifteen seconds, which will buy you some time.”
Anya was biting on her lower lip, as she fastened her belt, and studied the picture of the lock. “You’re telling me this…now.”
Dresan nodded. “We figured you work better under stress.”
Anya looked at Nin. From the way he smiled back, he seemed to know, that she knew it must have been him who figured that out.
“We managed to figure out how to deactivate the alarm system,” Tavia added, meaning ‘she and Dresan’ with ‘we’. “We’ll get in with the guy’s password and his 3D eyeball hologram ID—oh, and the janitor’s room should go fine, since we hacked that some time ago, so that any ID from someone within the GI can get through, not just Varian Gilbreth and those closest to him.”
Anya looked over at Nin, who hadn’t mentioned any of these steps to her.
“Just concentrate on your task,” Nin assured her. “And bring that along with you.” He pointed to the night vision goggles he’d handed to her earlier.
Getting the two keys, right, Anya noted.
“Leticia will be helping me out here,” Dresan continued, “and Tavia will exit the building once Anya’s got the other key from the guard. All clear?”
Tavia, Nin, and Anya bobbed their heads. Leticia was the last to give a nod. Anya on the other hand, was pumped up and ready to go. She crossed her fingers behind her, hoping against hope that the break-in would be as well coordinated in its execution, as it was in its elaborate planning.
“This is really awesome,” Anya said to Leticia, the train’s second human passenger for the night.
The train started to move, and approached the blue portal. Nin and Tavia had placed their own goggles over their heads too. Tavia passed him a couple of herbs from a packet she had with her, and they ingested it.
“Our brand of magik mushrooms,” Nin said to Anya, raising his eyebrows. “Helps our eyes and ears go into hypermode, for a while.”
Anya’s interest was piqued. “Can I have some?”
“This one’s a bit advanced, dear,” Tavia said, holding Anya back. “We don’t do this too often—too strong…”
Leticia’s hands were gripping the edge of her seat as the train carriage sped forward, surrounded by the celestial light. This time, Anya could see faint train tracks in front of the carriage, that guided the train to its destination.
Nin was busy going over the maps one last time. Anya couldn’t help but spend some of the time to study the contours of his streamlined body.
The journey this time was much quicker than the trip to Helli’sandur. They’d whizzed past the Milky Way backdrop again, but it seemed to be less than a minute that the train passed through another blue station. Leticia looked around at everyone when the train came to a stop, to convince herself that each of them had gotten safely over to the other side.
“Rigging the security tapes in...one minute,” Dresan let all of them know. He had everything prepared on the hard drive, with a couple of thumb drives for back-up, in case anything went wrong with the stored files. He and Leticia would be looking at the screens, side by side—what the security tapes at the GI were showing, and what the prepared rigged tapes would show, instead.
Tavia and Nin hopped out of the carriage, shortly after the group arrived at the dark, underground site. Anya exchanged a quick hug with Leticia before hopping off. Tavia and Nin were already making their way up a flight of stairs. All the stairs and passages looked the same to Anya. She didn’t know if there were little differences which clued the elves in as to which passageway they found themselves traveling through.
“We’ll be entering the compound at the back of the Omega unit,” Nin informed Anya, when they reached the end of the stairway. “Then we’ll enter the ventilation system, to get to the key room.” He touched the back of her elbow lightly, to let her know everything would be all right. Anya still felt she was going to be hit with an ill-timed panic attack. She felt like wrapping her arms around Nin again too, but decided not to, since Tavia was already getting the door open. She wond
ered if the earlier events of the night were adding to her anxiety.
Anya turned around once the three of them emerged from the dark stairway—they had stepped out from a tree in the compound’s lush garden. Nin and Tavia crept through the shadows, with Anya tailing them. The trio hid behind some bushes, looking out for an opportune moment.
A guard was on patrol, strolling on foot. They could hear him even if they had their eyes closed, as his feet dragged against some gravel on the ground.
Anya’s heart froze when the guard turned in their direction. He kept his gaze on one of the bushes that was several feet away from Nin, Tavia, and Anya, squinting to see if there was some movement in one of the lower branches. Anya was half-expecting the guard to prod the bushes with a rifle or shotgun—she’d leave it to the elves to handle the situation, if it did get to that.
“Get back,” Tavia whispered. Anya moved, before she realized that Tavia hadn’t intended the message for her.
Just then, a small rodent dashed out to the edge of the pavement. Anya heard it give a tiny squeak. The guard crept forward, almost ready to kick or crush the tiny vole, before it saw the guard, and scampered back into the bush. Nin and Tavia silently cheered for the quick-thinking rodent, as the guard faced the front again, and continued patrolling in a straight line. He hadn’t seen them.
Anya held her breath, waiting, till the guard turned round the corner. She stepped out after Tavia and Nin, who were making their way to a heavy glass door, which had to be opened by punching in the right combination of numbers on a digital lock. Anya nervously looked at the round, black globule situated in the corner of the wall beside the door. She knew it could be worse—it was probably the truly well-hidden, minute cameras that she had to be concerned about.
“Dresan’s got us covered,” Nin whispered to Anya. Trusting him caused her to worry less.
Tavia punched in a few numbers, then slid the magnetic strip of a plain plastic card in through the scanner at the right end of the lock. There was one more step—she lifted her N-Gage device and let the lock scan a hologram of the guard’s eye. The 3D eyeball hologram ID, Anya remembered.
The glass door swung open noiselessly. The first step was a clean success, with no mishaps.
“We should be thanking the guard we saw outside,” Tavia whispered back to Anya, as she scanned the magnetic strip through the lock on the door which had a “Fire Exit” sign above. “We swiped his ID to make a copy.” Tavia waved the card at Anya, then slipped it into the back pocket of her skin-tight pants.
Anya was wearing soft, light sneakers. Still, she tried to keep her steps as light as possible. Anya looked out at the compound through a window. Fireflies hovered around the light bulbs on the ground, which surrounded a small pagoda at one side of the garden. It’d be the perfect make-out spot for young lovers on an adventure together, in the dead of night.
The trio made their way down some stairs, and opened another door. Nin stepped up onto a chair and removed one of the ventilation grills in the wall.
“I’ll wait here, till it’s time for my date with the head guard,” Tavia said in a low voice to Nin and Anya. She replaced the cover once Anya had gone in after Nin.
“Follow me, and stay close.” Five words were all of Nin’s instructions.
They crept forward on all fours, in the confined, stuffy ventilation system. Anya tried to concentrate on her upcoming task, instead of zeroing in all her attention on Nin’s lithe, taut figure from the back. The latter did, however, make crawling through the ventilation system more bearable for Anya.
Anya was glad she had Nin as her guide. She lost track of where they could possibly be in the Omega unit, after they had made a right and left turn. Moving on all fours gave Anya the sensation that they were meandering about, though she logically knew that they had made two or three turns at the most. Nin however, seemed to know exactly where to go.
They entered a vent that seemed to make a sharp swerve. Anya was trying to keep her breathing steady—the vent seemed to twist and turn more and more, with each step she took forward, the tension weighing her down like lead. The walls—the walls were closing in on her!
“Everything all right?” Nin was just about to ask, when he heard some footsteps. The goggles and magik mushroom helped him pick it out—in the room directly beneath them.
“I—”
Nin turned as swiftly as he could, putting a hand up against Anya’s mouth, to keep her quiet. He stayed still as a stone statue, until he was sure the guard had gone into another area in the building.
I’m okay, Anya mouthed. She hadn’t ever been claustrophobic, and couldn’t let it get in the way now.
They continued for a few more paces, before Nin stopped, and backed around slowly. There was just enough room to do so. He pointed to the ventilation grill in front of Anya, which she slowly inched toward.
She looked down and saw the middle-aged, slightly portly guard sitting at a counter, before a wide number of screens. The guard looked like a Jabba the Hutt descendant. A half-eaten sandwich rested on the far side of the counter. Anya looked to the other side and saw the metal case, which she had ten seconds to open and grab the right keys from. The metal case was directly beneath her, and several steps away from the guard at the counter.
Nothing too difficult, she said to herself. That was her problem with being an optimist, at times. Over-confidence could lead to an overestimation of one’s abilities.
Nin listened in to Dresan over the earpiece.
“Key room cameras, all set,” Dresan updated him.
Nin peeked out at the security cameras that were focused on the key box itself.
“Move back,” Nin gestured to Anya, as he carefully made an opening in the ventilation grill for her. He made no mention of the blunders, on the elves’ first attempt at breaking into the Gilbreth.
They’d chosen to enter via the rooftop then, by throwing a brick into one of the ventilation turbines to jam the fan’s rotation. Nin had no time to make a proper-sized opening in one of the grills too, when he realized they weren’t all of the exact same dimensions. Guards were dispatched to investigate the rooftop by then. The brick hitting the fan blades had made a louder sound than Nin expected. It was rather mortifying to admit, and he was more comfortable leaving the facts unknown.
Anya watched him, as he worked on making the opening in the grill. A small laser beam from his wrist device was doing the job just nicely.
She knew now why she was better suited for the job. Nin was tall and slender; Anya was more compact, in comparison. Nin was smashed up against the tight space in the vent. Anya could turn and move around with less trouble, and easily get through the opening. Having a slight frame had its advantages.
Nin latched a metal hook onto the wall for Anya to attach her belayer device. She connected the line of rope and steadied herself, recalling what she knew from rock climbing, as she removed her bracelet from her left hand that she always wore with her. She held the bracelet in her mouth, holding it tightly in between parched lips.
Nin was just about to hand her a couple of thin, metal picks, for the lock. If a person used too much force to pick the lock, there’d be a hard ‘click’ which would alert the guard. Where were Anya’s tools for picking the lock?
“What are you doing?” Nin whispered. It was the same bracelet he’d taken, just the day before. What tricks have you got, Anya? He studied her face, noticing how her cute ski nose gave her a touch of daintiness, which contrasted with the more daring aspects of her nature.
Anya thought of the picture of the lock, which Dresan had shown her on his laptop. She removed the bracelet, to be able to speak. “It’s a three-point turn system lock?” She decided to be extra sure, and silently mouthed the password numbers. “Two one seven?”
Nin pointed to the bracelet, gesturing for an explanation.
“My lock pick,” Anya whispered back.
Nin gave a nod. He’d leave her to her own devices. She was as sure of what she
was about to do as he had been, when guiding them through the ventilation system.
Anya replaced the bracelet in between her lips, when Nin put a hand up. He was listening to his earpiece. Anya couldn’t hear the faintest thing that was being said or transmitted.
“Ready?” Nin mouthed to her.
She nodded, and he put a thumb up. Then three fingers, and two, and then one, signaling the final second.
Anya entered the key room once she heard the guard swivel on his seat. It was going as Dresan had planned with the rigged security tapes. One column of screens was jamming up with jagged lines of interference. The guard knocked his hand on the screens, to see if it would make any difference.
Anya lowered herself swiftly, using her toes to quietly balance against the wall surface as she made her way toward the key cabinet. She teetered back, taking the bracelet from her mouth, and held out two of the key charms that were at the ends of the bracelet. There were two sharpened points at the tips of the key charms, which gave them the functionality of the ends of metal paper clips, with an added amount of crucial precision.
Here goes, Anya told herself.
The lock had three separate dials of numbers, which radiated from the center. Anya slotted the sharpened points of the key into the groove in each of the numbers that she wanted—2, 1, 7—so that the numbers were lined up in a straight line, which got the cabinet door open.
Her heart stopped when the guard took a wide step to one side. She heard the “thump” of his footstep against the floor, and she froze. It took every ounce of her will to stop her hands from shaking and from making even the slightest sound. In fact, she hardly dared to breathe. But the guard continued to look in the direction of the screens, seemingly trying to figure out if there was equipment trouble. Another column had started to buzz with the interfering static. Anya had all of ten precious seconds.