by Jess C Scott
10...9...8...
The possibility of being caught loomed like a ticking time bomb. Anya searched frantically for the keys labeled “Janitor’s Room” and “V.” She looked at the left side: “Conference Room,” “Video/Audio Room,” “Library,” “Visitor’s Center.”
7...6...5...
Then Anya spotted the first key on the right side, the second key on the second row, labeled “Janitor’s Room.” The second key labeled “V” was the last key on the bottom row. She grabbed the keys and swapped them with the fake keys she had brought along, and prepared to relock the cabinet with her bracelet. She wasn’t thinking through the steps—she’d had enough practice with locks and thefts to be able to do a decent job. The movements were all natural to her. The hard facts gave her the adrenaline she needed to see that she didn’t make a faulty move—if she was too slow, the alarm would sound.
4...3...2...
She turned the number ‘7’ once, anticlockwise around the outermost dial, which set the lock to turn in random numbers to reseal the cabinet. The guard’s hand slammed down on another screen, when the lock gave the faintest click to signal the combination had been set in place again. Anya really wondered how she had gotten into this in the first place, not even knowing if she would come out of it alive…
1.
Anya’s bracelet slipped through her hands. She stuck a hand out, grabbing it midair before it could hit the ground. She leveraged herself against the edge of the wall with one foot, the other foot ready to swing up, her neck tensing up as she kept her balance—before she heard the guard curse, and dial a number on his cell.
“X096812!” the guard barked down the cellular device. “Why is there a goddamn monkey, on the rooftop?”
Anya felt—and heard—her shoe tap the wall as she pushed off the wall to move upwards. Just then, a low hum came on as the lights in the key room dimmed a notch. A voice came on over the building’s intercom: “Lockdown activated.”
Anya made her way back up to Nin in one piece, just as the lights flickered back to their pre-dimmed state. She heard the guard muttering, “I can’t see where it’s gone…take it down…I don’t want that thing messing around with the security systems again.”
Nin gave her a quick hug around the neck, before scuttling toward the vent. He’d shut his eyes for a moment, when Anya dropped the bracelet. Anya didn’t know it, but he’d held on to her belayer line when her foot hit the wall. His glove had absorbed some of the sound and impact when she leveraged on the sole of her foot for some balance and stability.
Anya thought the video was a creative use of an actual live monkey. She wondered how long it took to get all the fake videos—and interruptions—looking anything but fake.
She checked to see that the two keys were secured in the small loops on her belt, before putting her bracelet back on. She looked over at Nin, who was busy welding back the bars he had cut, using the same small laser beam from his wrist device.
“Good as new,” he whispered, before tuning in to his earpiece. He listened intently for a few seconds, before turning back to Anya. “Ready for the head guard?”
Anya stopped herself from sighing. Her adrenaline levels had skyrocketed through the roof, and she wasn’t so sure she was quite ready for another round so soon. If she suffered a heart attack, she was going to place the blame on Nin.
As if reading her thoughts, Nin whispered over her lips, “Sooner it gets done, the better.” That seemed enough to get Anya to comply.
He’s so fine, she thought. He’s such a good leader. Anyone who could coordinate this has to be.
Little did she know that Nin’s thoughts paralleled hers at that very moment. He was silently full of praise and admiration for his lovely, new thieving accomplice.
Chapter 10:
Anya was beginning to feel a little faint, when she saw Nin pause and turn his head to the right. The moonlight that shone into the room cast some light on his face. Anya saw him smirk to himself. It highlighted his devil-may-care persona, which Anya found quite irresistible. He slid out of an open vent, and helped Anya out.
“Tavia removed this earlier for us,” Nin said, before replacing the ventilation grill. Nin was glad everything was going perfectly as planned. And it was going a lot better than their first attempt.
“What room is this?” Anya asked.
“A laboratory, of some sort.”
There was a silvery-bluish tinge to the interior of the room, which had a whiteboard on one side of the wall with scientific notations scrawled all over it. The walls were lined with cabinets—whether they contained files, or something else, Anya didn’t stay behind to find out. Nin held her hand gently, moving in the shadows, out an open door, and then skulking alongside a corridor, before stopping about midway. He moved like he had night vision, like a panther that had no problems with navigating in the dark. Nin gestured to Anya to back up against the wall, as he adjusted his earpiece.
Anya heard the sound of heavy shoes on a polished floor. The night shift’s head guard, a hefty towering individual with a fierce tribal-pattern shaved hairstyle, prowled the open space in front. His shoulders seemed broader than Nin and Anya’s combined shoulder width, if they were standing together. The guard’s obvious upper body strength made him ten times more intimidating than the officer keeping watch at the key room. Anya would have baulked earlier in the vent, if the guards had switched places.
Anya shuddered to think of a physical confrontation with the head guard. She wouldn’t stand a chance. Neither would Nin, for that matter, unless it was a battle of wits, and not brawn—a skilled, lighter-framed and more agile opponent might be able to exhaust the other. From the map Anya remembered, the janitor’s room would be somewhere over to the right. They’d have to make a quick dash to the door, and slip the key in.
Suddenly, Anya heard another sound, a metallic clinking sound, coming from a further distance away, like someone was lightly striking a fingernail against a metal railing. The guard peered up, at an overhead passageway which linked two departments together in the Omega unit. The hunter was seeking out his prey.
Everyone waited, all four of them, though there was one other main individual to uncover, as far as the guard was concerned. Nin stayed still as a statue. Anya held on to the “Janitor’s Room” key, ready to place it in the keyhole once they got to the door.
There was complete silence for a few more nerve-wracking moments, before the clinking began again. It was a more staccato beat this time, like someone was tapping along to the rhythm of some music. Then an unearthly voice, speaking in the Elven tongue, which made the small hairs on Anya’s skin stand on end. Anya saw the guard move forward, and Nin edged over to the right, with Anya close behind. Nin turned back once to see the guard ascending a flight of stairs, as Anya opened the door to the janitor’s room.
Nin fumbled behind the closed door to get his crystal light pendant out. Sensing his difficulty, Anya gingerly fished her pendant out from under her shirt. She had been hesitant to use it until now, and was ecstatic to find it worked exactly as Nin’s did that very first time she had seen it in the passageway, which led down to the Velvet Underground.
“Here’s the vault.” Nin moved aside some discarded CPUs, and a stack of boxes behind that, to reveal a small plain door. What seemed like a built-in cupboard in a depression in the wall, with some jackets and tools casually strewn about, actually hid a passage. Nin and Anya squeezed in through the gap, and headed down a steep stepladder.
Nin turned around almost as soon as he set his foot upon the ground. They were close—so close—closer than they’d ever been, to locating the final parchment piece.
Anya’s eyes widened when they stood before the hexagonal vault. The sensor system was, indeed, on. Red lines criss-crossed through the spaces in between the glass cabinets which held the treasured items of Varian Gilbreth’s private collection.
“You can take a rest,” Nin told Anya, as he studied the room, scrutinizing the criss-cro
ss pattern of the sensors. “I’ll do this part.” He held out his hand for the second key, which would unlock the cabinet of medieval parchments. Then he opened the front cover of his wrist device, and showed Anya a jagged thick piece of ancient-looking paper inside. “I’ve got a fake replacement too.”
Anya nodded, perplexingly. Elves were skilled in covering their tracks. She handed him the second key.
“I dare you…” Anya said in a low, mischievous tone, “to get to the cabinet in fifteen seconds.” It was only fair, since she had been allocated that amount of time to secure the two keys. She was standing up close to Nin, close enough to tiptoe for another enticing kiss that’d sweep her off her feet.
Nin seemed to know just what she had on her mind. But he decided to let her wait. He cracked his knuckles and relaxed the tension from his neck muscles.
“All right,” he remarked, pointing to the glass cabinet at the end of the room. It was the one circled on the third map Anya had studied, the one with the accompanying text, “X MARKS THE SPOT: Medieval parchment pieces, HERE.”
Anya folded her arms in front of her, as Nin took a daring backbend over the first red sensor line, balancing on one arm before he flipped over onto his feet. Anya covered her eyes when he reached the center, and came within a hair’s breadth of one of the sensor lines at his chin level. Acrobatic, slinky Ithilnin made an art form out of getting through the sensor obstacle course successfully, jumping over, sliding under, and bending (contorting, almost) with equal dexterity, graceful as a cat.
He put his hands up when he made it to the glass cabinet—Anya didn’t know whether he had made it in fifteen seconds. She was so completely mesmerized by his movements that she had forgotten to time him. All she knew was that he made what must have been exceedingly complex look deceptively easy.
Anya gave him a silent round of applause, with deep admiration and sincerity. He simply smiled. As he turned his attention to the parchment pieces in the glass cabinet, Anya cautiously edged around the room, dodging the sensor lines, which seemed to be pointing in all directions.
There were pictures hanging on the wall, and one in particular caught her attention. It was a framed photo of Varian Gilbreth, founder of The Gilbreth Institute, standing in a group in front of an archaeological find: a morbid and strange fantasy lineup of high society medieval folks mingling with skeletons. The attire of the medieval individuals showed their high status. Some of them wore royal robes, bejeweled rings on their fingers, and an all-round uppity kind of expression on their faces.
One of the young men standing in the group looked strangely familiar.
Anya went over and read the small golden plaque at the bottom of the framed photo. It read:
The Dance of Death, medieval fresco, Croatia.
The Dance of Death is wholly consistent with the medieval acknowledgement of death and life as a continuum. The origin of the theme dates from a thirteenth-century legend of three young men who confront themselves as three corpses one day while out hunting. It is elaborated here in a parade of people of society (note the priest, king, and scholar) mingling with skeletons, highlighting the fleeting nature of their mortal lives and vain pleasures.
Standing in front, from left to right: Marcia Anne Starr, Karen Yap, Varian Gilbreth, Samuel Lycata.
“Samuel Lycata…” Anya muttered, leaning her neck forward for a better look.
She recognized the last name, and then the face, as Julius’s dad. The photo was taken many years ago, but she could definitely see some resemblance to both Lycatas in recent times. What was the senior Lycata doing in front of a medieval fresco, standing next to the well-rumored to be reclusive and mentally unstable Gilbreth, like they were the best of friends? Was this how Julius’s dad spent his vacation time?
Anya had seen Samuel Lycata in person just once, when he was a guest speaker at UZZO, University of Zouk, Zone One. He had given a motivational talk on setting and achieving one’s goals. He was the CEO of Xenith, one of the four international pharmaceutical megacorporations, which raked in billions of dollars each year.
A cold shudder went through Anya, when she turned back to check if Nin had located the parchment piece he was looking for. For a moment, she envisioned him as a skeleton, almost like she was stuck in an episode of lucid dreaming.
Anya didn’t know if it had anything to do with the skeleton king painting she had seen in The Velvet Underground, or the Dance of Death fresco, which was still fresh in her mind. Maybe the two paintings had no connection whatsoever. But then again, maybe they did. Anya was beginning to think anything was possible, judging from all she had been exposed to in the past few hours.
Anya was more concerned with how weak Nin looked, as he leaned against the glass cabinet, almost ready to keel over and collapse onto the ground. A sensor line was right behind the back of his neck—one distracted step backwards could cost them their lives, if Varian Gilbreth turned out to be as ruthless as he was paranoid.
“Are you okay?” she called out. She stared nervously at the range of security cameras in the room. They were similar to the round, black globule in the corner of the wall at the Omega building’s backdoor.
She made her away over to Nin when he didn’t respond. She crawled through and over the sensor lines with much difficulty and caution.
“Are you just trying to see how slow I am?” Anya called out again, in a staccato half-laugh.
Nin could be a joker at times, and Anya would’ve given him a prize if he was playing a trick on her right then. She saw his hands going up to his temples, as he rubbed the sides of his forehead, as a person having a bad case of migraine would. She draped an arm over Nin’s shoulder once she got to him. “What’s the matter?”
Nin’s breathing turned raspy for a moment, before he got it under control. He turned around, leaning slightly against Anya for some support, as he hit a button on his wrist device. A violet ray of light shone from the screen, and he positioned his arm in front of him, so that the ray of light flooded over the nearest sensor line.
His wrist device beeped a few times in succession softly, indicating a substance in the sensor line. Anya gaped at what the violet light revealed: tiny particles floating within each red sensor.
“Pure iron,” Nin told her, sounding like all the air had been knocked out of his lungs. He peered at the tiny particles, going up so close that it made Anya fear for his safety. The red hue of the sensor gave his eyes a similarly reddish tint. “I’m staring at death in the eye.”
All the very real images of death were making Anya very uncomfortable. She wanted to get out of the vault, fast—once they’d gotten what they came for.
“Pure iron kills elves,” Anya said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. What she had researched was true, then. “You need to get out of here.”
Nin was fighting the grogginess. “At least we know Varian Gilbreth believes in elves,” he pointed out. Then he lifted a finger and pointed towards a jagged parchment piece inside the glass cabinet, hidden under a handful of others. “That’s the one we want. I recognize the painting and style of the script.”
“Don’t you dare die on me, Prince Ithilnin of Helli’sandur,” Anya heard herself saying. Anya wasn’t sure how the pure iron needed to work, in order to be deadly. For the first time since they’d entered the building, she felt an overwhelming, unfounded sense of dread and terror. Everything she knew was going to come to an end, overnight, like a candle snuffed out in the middle of the night.
Nin shook his head, like a half-awake drunk would. “It’s lethal once it enters the bloodstream…right now it’s just…draining my energy…”
He handed Anya the fake parchment piece from his wrist device, as she took back the second key from him, and opened the sliding glass door. She carefully made the switch and let Nin have a look at the parchment piece he had pointed out.
“Yes…” he muttered to himself. He saw the title of the poem, and finally had the missing word to the letter ‘i’ that had pla
gued him for so long.
Anya stared at the parchment, which was unreadable to her. “What does it say?”
Nin was scanning through the three lines of the poem, linking the words to what he knew of the parchment already. “Something very, very deep.” The implications were tremendous, and he tried to make sense of it, wondering what to do now that he had all three pieces which made up the entire poem on the parchment. “The title’s…”
Chapter 11:
Suddenly, all the overhead lights in the vault went off. The red sensor lines stayed on. They cut eerily across the darkened room, like streaks of blood and impending doom.
Anya held onto Nin out of sheer terror—both their hands were lukewarm to each other’s touch, because both their bodies were ice-cold.
Nin had placed the parchment in a plastic sleeve, which he prudently stored in his wrist device. He had gotten what they had come for—now came the hard part of retracing their steps and making a clean getaway.
They heard a voice coming on outside: “Lockdown activated.” It was the same mechanical, automated voice as before.
“That’s supposed to happen just once,” Nin uttered to Anya, as he started guiding her back to where they had entered the vault. He tried tuning in to Dresan over the earpiece, but could only hear crackling feedback.
* * *
Outside the janitor’s room, Tavia watched as the head guard rushed out to another area in the Omega unit, where all the guards on duty were assembling. Her earlier orders from Nin were to wait for Dresan’s signal to her, for yet another fingernail-tapping distraction, once Anya and Nin were ready to emerge from the secret vault.
She had to move at lightning speed, when the head guard became intent on seeking out the source of the metallic clinking. She was more than happy to see him go.
Tavia fiddled with her earpiece, wondering if the annoying static had something to do with the unexpected second fake lockdown activation. She tapped the earpiece a few times, then pressed it harder against her ear. Was there a message for her? Had she missed something?