The Decision
Three weeks passed slowly. Each and every morning Chris was waiting, and we trained relentlessly. Chris was noting my improvements, I learned how to better plan my moves, to not rush in and leave myself open, but to plan for every contingent. I was better at handling my strength too, any blow I landed on Chris still left bruises, but for what I was truly capable of, it was a definite plus.
Chris, begrudgingly, staked out the building Anna was becoming more and more pumped over. Digilock’s building was across the city, so after training Chris was gone for the majority of the day. The rest of us prepared.
Paul stayed out of everyone’s way for the most part, especially Anna’s. We never saw him for around a week, and after that, he travelled with Chris.
The snow that had glittered over the city as it fell gave way to rain. It washed away any residual snow that had landed, and the weather in a way, mimicked the mounting tension within the group.
‘Tonight,’ Anna spoke into the silence from the couch, ‘tonight.’
I took a sip of the coffee that had gone cold in my hands, and moved from the kitchen to take up the place next to her.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘I’m done waiting, Lucas,’ she said. ‘It’s been three weeks, Chris has had enough time.’
I nodded in agreement. Chris was drawing it out, hoping we’d change our minds. A few minutes later, my ears picked up the sound of the elevator doors opening, and I made my way out to catch Chris and Paul before Anna got a hold of them.
Soaked and red-faced, both men shivered as they left the elevator.
‘Good, I was just coming to find you,’ Chris said.
‘Me too,’ I replied. ‘Anything new?’
‘That’s the thing, Lucas,’ Chris sighed, ‘there’s nothing. Today we went to the other two buildings owned by Digilock, and they’re maximum security prisons compared to the one we were staking out. Something is wrong.’
‘I don’t get it,’ I said.
‘In the other buildings there are checkpoints as you walk in the front door,’ Chris explained. ‘You need an ID card, plus a password before you even get to the metal detectors and guards. On our building there’s nothing. A receptionist and that’s it.’
‘He’s right, Lucas,’ Paul chimed, and I had to take a breath to hold my composure. ‘We tried something today.’
‘What?’ I said when they’d lapsed into silence.
They both looked at one another, and Chris drew a deep breath.
‘I sent Paul in,’ he said. ‘I would have gone myself, but, my own face with yours and Anna’s faces are plastered everywhere, and we had to be careful, so Paul volunteered.’
‘I walked straight in, Lucas,’ Paul continued. ‘I walked straight by reception. There’s no guards, no metal detectors, nothing. I even got on the elevator and rode it up to the twenty-fourth floor, and no one stopped me. If I’d had the equipment from Brian I could’ve gotten the bloody files myself.’
I shook my head.
‘How is that possible?’ I asked.
‘It’s not,’ Chris answered, ‘unless someone’s made it that way for us.’
We lapsed into our thoughts, tried to work through the information, but none of us could think of anything other than that it screamed trap. But my mind wasn’t concerned with that. There was no way we were going to just bury this lead, both Anna and I refused to, and Chris was telling us that it was going to be too easy to get in?
‘I can see what you’re thinking Lucas, and no, this is far too dangerous now,’ Chris said.
‘Everything we do now is dangerous, Chris,’ I said. ‘This is the only thing we have.’
‘Anna will listen to you,’ Chris reasoned. ‘If you tell her it’s too much of a risk she’ll listen.’
‘You want me to placate her!?’ I whispered and my upper lip curled in disgust. ‘Brush it under the rug and let it go? There could be information on her brother there! And you want me to tell her to abandon it!?’
Chris sighed in frustration, and Paul fidgeted.
‘I want you to think about this for Christ’s sake!’ Chris fumed. ‘Anna’s pregnant, and you want to march into a goddamned trap! Do you even care!?’
That pushed me over the line.
‘It’s because I care that I’m doing this! You think because I’m not running for the hills that I’m reckless!?’ I screamed. ‘They’ve taken EVERYTHING from us. They’ll take more if we let them! They’ll hurt more if we let them!’
Chris’s face was like a tomato and rage popped the veins in his neck.
‘I refuse to walk into that room and tell Anna to give up looking for her brother,’ I spat. ‘I will not lie to make her complacent. You’ve done enough of that.’
For a second Chris looked confused.
‘Remember,’ I growled, ‘when you convinced us all in Greystone we were escaping to bring help back for our families? You bullshitted us to keep us happy. You knew that as soon as we got out the government would try to brush us away.’
Chris paled. His search for words was in vain as he opened his mouth and spluttered excuses. I wanted as much as he did to have a normal life again. To wake up every morning and not have to train abilities I shouldn’t even have. To not have to look over my shoulder every five seconds to make sure there wasn’t someone waiting to gun me down. The only way it would end, was if we ended it.
‘We’re going in,’ I said, ‘tonight.’
I turned and stormed off.
*
Anna and Brian were wary when I walked back into the main room. Anna looked ready to burst out a stream of questions, but I shook my head. Chris and Paul slouched in behind me, and Paul walked over to his son, while Chris remained by the door. My mind was whirring, questions firing left, right and centre. But I pushed them down, and focused on what we were going to do. I was not going to doubt myself, it had to be done.
‘Is there any way to get weapons?’ I directed my question at Brian. ‘Especially in the next couple of hours?’
Brian shook his head, and I sighed.
‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean no as in no,’ Brian said. ‘I meant it’s not necessary.’
‘Okay?’ I said.
‘I mean, we already have weapons,’ Brian answered, his words rushed.
‘When we set the place up,’ Paul said, ‘it was part of the equipment we got.’
‘How did you… Never mind,’ I cut myself off, there wasn’t time, if Brian could get drugs and a mass amount of tech, then weapons wasn’t a stretch. ‘What do you have?’
Paul seemed to perk up, and he smiled and walked over, manoeuvring me towards the doorway.
‘Soon, you’ll be asking what don’t we have,’ he beamed.
Anna, Brian and Chris followed Paul and I out of the room, and across the corridor. Paul unlocked the door, and we all walked into an area that was almost identical to the one we had just left. The same old, yet classy furniture littered the room, paintings and dim lights hung from the walls. The window in front of us was completely made of glass, and it peered out onto the opposite side of the city. However in this room, there was no array of computers.
Off to either side were two doors leading into the rooms Brian and Paul slept in. Paul adjusted the lights, something we hadn’t dared do so far, and where computers took the space in our room, tables adorned with black metal sat in theirs.
‘Holy crap,’ I whispered.
‘You can’t be too prepared,’ Paul almost sang. He was undeniably chipper, and I wondered whether he’d had a fix. Then I wondered on how much of a good idea was leaving guns in the open with a drug addict.
‘Handguns, tranquilizers,’ Chris muttered glumly as he perused the tables, ‘ammo. This must have cost quite a bit.’
‘I told you,’ Brian said, ‘money isn’t an issue. I’m good. I managed to make a contact online who sold this sort of stuff. It seemed a good idea to stock up. Don’t worry, Chris, this guy’s not gonna lead back
to us. Doesn’t know our names, doesn’t know where we are. I paid him, he dropped the guns in a location of my choice, and Dad picked them up.’
Chris didn’t look too happy.
I noticed a table at the far left with long silver blades that reflected the soft light.
‘I noticed in Greystone you had an affinity with that sort of weapon,’ Brian informed me, catching the confusion on my face. ‘I got some just in case.’
‘This is exactly what we need,’ Anna whispered, her face focused and alert.
‘We use the tranqs,’ I said. ‘From what Chris has said we’ll probably not have to use them, but in case we do, no lethal force.’
Chris scoffed and said, ‘And when these people you’re being so considerate about unleash lethal force on you?’
‘We’re not those people,’ I hit back.
We loaded the tranquilizer guns and slipped them into holsters Brian supplied us with. We moved back into our room, and Brian slid up to his computers. We arranged ourselves around him, and started formulating a plan.
Chris finally relented, and in a glum tone explained his idea. Two of us would take different ways into the building, and one of us would wait a few streets away with the car. Brian told us of how there was a skylight on the roof leading directly into the room we wanted. It was alarmed, but he was confident that by the time we needed to use it, he would have it deactivated.
‘Are there any guards on the floor?’ I asked Paul.
‘Not that I could see, no,’ he replied.
Brian swivelled in his chair and adjusted his glasses.
‘Digilock doesn’t supply the floors with their guards,’ he informed us. ‘They leave it up to whoever is renting the floor. That way the customer can feel more secure in the knowledge their information is safe. If there are no guards then Richard hasn’t placed any.’
Chris grumbled audibly, and Anna turned round to him.
‘Problem?’ she smiled.
‘No,’ Chris replied.
‘I’ll take the roof,’ I cut in. ‘It’ll be easier for me, and faster.’
Chris nodded.
‘Okay, then I’ll take the front,’ he said. ‘I’ll take out the receptionist, and see if we can’t just walk right in again.’
‘No,’ Anna said. ‘I’ll take the front.’
‘You’re not going,’ Chris said, without so much as a glance.
To her credit, Anna didn’t react to his words. Her anger was in check, and she turned, stared at him levelly, and said, ‘Just try and stop me.’
‘Remember you’re pregnant,’ Chris hissed.
‘Remember I’m not incapable,’ she shot back. ‘If you think I’m going to sit back on fluffy cushions while my brother is going through all sorts then you’re insulting your own intelligence.’
Chris shook his head and laughed, but it wasn’t because he found what Anna said funny. He rubbed his temples and gritted his teeth.
‘Fine, what the hell,’ he spat. ‘I’ll get the car.’
He moved noisily from his seat and left the room. Brian, looking uncomfortable, disappeared and returned a few minutes later. He had two black objects in his hand, small and oval-shaped. They were headsets that he had already linked to the phone in Chris’s stolen car.
‘This way I can keep in contact with you, I fiddled around with the range and made it wider to account for the distance you’ll be from the car,’ he said. ‘To save time, I uploaded a program to a USB that should crack the security in that room.’
‘Should?’ I asked.
‘Will,’ Brian corrected, ‘it will crack it. Then it’ll search through the files for anything relating to Anna’s brother and Richard’s whereabouts. I even factored in any information about a so called twin sister Lucas, just in case.’
‘What about security cameras, inside and out?’ I asked.
‘I’ll set them on a loop once you’re there,’ Brian replied.
‘Thanks,’ I said and clasped his shoulder.
We took the USB drive and headed for the elevator. My heart felt ready to burst from my chest, and I bounced on my heels as we rode down to the bottom floor. Anna was in a similar way, I could feel the tension roll off of her in waves, and she had started to sweat. I took her hand and squeezed.
‘Are you positive about this?’ I asked, knowing the answer.
She nodded and looked me in the eye as the elevator pinged to a stop.
‘Here we go,’ I said.
The Test
Chris drove within the confines of the speed limit. I shivered slightly in the back seat and stared out into the night. I took shallow breaths, and my mind tangled with itself with doubt. Was Chris right? Was I being stupid? What the hell were we doing? But I snuffed the questions out. There was no one else out there stopping my father. We were in it up to our eyeballs. We were in it until the end.
An hour passed, and the blank faces of people walking the streets were our only friends. The car was silent, and the anger and frustration clogged the air like smoke. Chris was furious. Anna was furious. I was terrified. It was going to be a long night.
Eventually, we stopped, and Chris slid round in his seat to face us.
‘Are you sure about this?’ he pleaded. ‘I can’t talk you out of it?’
I shook my head.
‘It has to be done, Chris,’ Anna sighed.
‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it, sweetheart,’ Chris replied.
I got out the car, put the headset in my ear, and waited for Anna to roll down her window.
‘Tell me when you’re on the roof, and I’ll make my way up,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you can do this, Lucas? I mean, it’s crazy.’
I nodded and told her not to worry before setting off down the street. I’d worn a jumper with a hood, and I pulled that hood over my head, shielding my face. I slouched past people who paid me no mind, while my heart assaulted my ribs. It only further intensified the fact that we had to stop my father. I was becoming tired of living in such fear.
Following the pavement I was on, I eventually came to a tall building, ‘Digilock Enterprises’ hung boldly above the glass revolving doors that led inside. I took a few minutes to look around the outside of the building. It was mostly grey concrete blocks, but every time it reached a new floor a ring of windows encircled the entire building. That gave me the climbing frame I needed. The windows, as Brian had learned, were one way. You could see out from inside, but they were practically black from the outside, and almost impossible to break. The skylight I aimed for was different, still alarmed, but less durable and it was transparent.
I moved to the back of the building and down an alley. I looked up and sighed.
Please God don’t let me fall.
With that thought battering around my brain I jumped. I kicked my legs from the ground, and using my strength, sailed through the air until I latched onto the first-floor ledge. From there I just had to pull myself up, and like a frog, repeat what I’d just done. I even chuckled over my frog comparison. I wasn’t laughing when I reached halfway and looked down.
‘Oh god,’ I grumbled into the wind, pushing myself closer towards the building. ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic, you’re not going to fall. Why the hell did I volunteer for this? What the hell was I bloody thinking!? What if someone sees me through the windows? Next time, someone else can scale the tall things, because I am done doing it.’
I kept moaning as I climbed, it was comforting. After a half hour I was one floor away from the roof. I shook as I moved my arm slowly to the headset chiming at my ear, and pressed the button.
‘How’s it going, Lucas?’ Anna asked. She sounded impatient.
‘I’m scaling a building, Anna,’ I whispered, terrified. ‘At any second I could fall and you know, die.’
‘Sorry,’ she sighed.
‘It’s cool,’ I answered. ‘I’m there. You can make your move.’
She hung up, and I jumped, clasped onto the ledge of the roof, and slipped.
&
nbsp; SHIT!
I flailed with one hand latched onto the ledge. I had to bite my tongue to stop from screaming. Once I’d calmed, I stretched and pulled myself up. I lay on the roof panting, more from undiluted panic than from exertion. After I’d gotten myself together, I stood and walked over to the skylight, then crouched and stared inside.
The moon was full and it lit up the night in silver. An icy wind blew around the rooftop as I looked into the room below. It was large, cylindrical like the window I stared through, but sparse. Its tiled floors and stone walls set alarm bells off in my mind. It was too empty. A single computer sat straight below where I stood, at the back of the room, and across from it was the wide entranceway that led in.
I drew a deep breath, filtering through my thoughts. The test we were acting out would hopefully prove Chris’s fears correct or not. It was simple, wait for Anna to come into the room, and then enter the room myself, my way a little more destructive, and a lot more surprising.
Come on.
I wrapped my arms around myself.
The wind stilled, and my ears honed in on a short, sharp sound. A normal person wouldn’t have heard it, but I was no longer normal. That saved my life. I moved, using my unnatural speed to shift out of the way of a bullet hurtling through the air. I was on my feet and sprinting when another hit the ground where I had crouched. I raced across the roof and hid behind the entrance out onto it.
Damn it! Not another one!
I didn’t dare peek around the corner. I knew I wouldn’t see the sniper anyway.
‘Lucas!’ Anna’s voice was muffled by the ground at my feet, but I heard her.
Shit!
We didn’t need this. We didn’t need more complications to add to the mix, but life wasn’t the way it used to be, I wasn’t the way I used to be. I threw myself out into the line of fire and barrelled at the skylight. I felt something whiz by my cheek, but it missed, and just when I started to panic, I jumped at the window and crashed into the room below.
I fell with the glittering shards of glass and smacked into the ground. The fall hadn’t particularly hurt, but the splinter of glass that punctured my leg had. I gasped and struggled quickly to my feet.
Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) Page 7